There isn’t a student under the sun who hasn’t faced down an exam like a sweaty cowboy in a gunfight, hand hovering over their holstered weapon, fierce and ready to draw, only to discover in the trembling heat of the moment that *click* the chambers are empty and you’re in deep doo-doo.
I get it, I've been there. While you may have studied—and studied hard—something happened in that exam that left your high-calibre intellectual weaponry devoid of bullets. We all want to learn as efficiently as possible but if re-reading, highlighting, and summarizing the textbook isn’t enough, then what should we be doing?
I'll tell you exactly what: active recall studying.
What is the active recall study technique?
Active recall studying is when you actively stimulate your memory for a piece of information. For example:
Who was the first president of the United States?
What is the capital of Argentina?
Where in the body is the basal ganglia located?
As I ask you each of these questions, your brain runs a lightning-quick search of its memory banks for the answers. It's performing this action "from scratch" with just the question as a prompt. This is active recall: a much more powerful way to teach your brain to remember than passive study techniques like reading and highlighting text.
(Another word for active recall studying is retrieval practice: when your brain goes into its vast storehouse of information and looks for that one specific fact or answer.)
Answers: George Washington, Buenos Aires, and the brain
Active recall is NOT recognition
Importantly, active recall is NOT recognition. The reason it's so important to distinguish between the two is because "recognition" gives students a false sense of knowledge and memory.
When you recognize a piece of information, it might feel like you know it ... but you don't; at least not well enough to recall it from scratch and use it to answer an exam question. This is why multiple-choice tests don't work well for studying.
Students recognize the correct answer in a list of answers and it lulls them into a false sense of knowing the information when all they're doing is recognizing it.
If you're pulling the answer from the page in front of you, you don't really remember it. You only truly know a piece of information when you can pull it out from your memory. That's why active recall studying is such a powerful technique for learning.
Active recall studying vs. passive review
Passive review is when you read (and re-read) your textbook, highlight the important information, and make study notes. All of these are excellent exercises for engaging with and reframing the information you're studying ... but while they help you understand the data, they don't necessarily help you ingrain it.
Try it: after a two-hour study session of passive review, try to give a lecture on everything you covered. You probably can't.
This is why, in addition to this work, it's excellent practice to exercise your powers of active recall to establish those deep neural pathways that are essential for permanent memory.
Why does active recall matter?
So, why should you master the active recall study technique? Because active recall gets A's, my friend. And it's essential for deep, efficient learning.
Using active recall is one of the most effective ways to study.
Active recall studying is much more effective than either recognition or passive review at consolidating information in your long-term memory. It’s the quickest and most effective way to study—either for factual or problem-solving tests. It’s also more effective than other forms of studying, like note-taking and concept mapping (although these are useful study techniques).
To better understand what's going on when you study using active recall, let's take a look under the hood of your brain...
[Psssst! Have you seen Brainscape's Official YouTube channel? You'll find tons of videos on study, productivity, and self-development tips and hacks!]
The cognitive science behind active recall
The more we practice retrieving information from our memory, the better we get at it. In fact, it's the retrieval practice that actually helps us learn the information.
Karpicke and Roediger's study—The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning—showed that what matters most for recalling information is how much (and often) you test yourself on it using an active recall study technique. In other words, trying to remember information from scratch helps you learn that information—and permanently remember it—quicker.
Three step active recall techniques to learn quicker
So, how can you harness active recall to learn quicker? I'm so glad you asked because this is really what Brainscape's study app is all about! (We'll talk about that in a bit.) There are three key ways you can harness the power of active recall to help you remember information more efficiently:
1. The SQ3R method
The SQ3R method is an effective way to learn the material you've read in a piece of text, for example, a chapter of your history textbook. The method has five steps:
- Survey: survey or skim the material to get an idea of what it is about.
- Question: create some questions that you have and that you think the text might answer.
- Read: Then actively read the text, trying to answer the questions you created.
- Retrieve: This is the active recall part. Recall from memory the information you learned. Use your own words to formulate the material. Do it either orally or in writing.
- Review: Once you finish that, repeat back to yourself what the point of the material was, and summarize what you learned.
If you like the idea of actually remembering what you read, check out our Academy article: 'How to read a textbook—and remember what you’ve read'.
2. The Feynman technique
We here at Brainscape are such proponents of the Feynman technique that we wrote this article about it: 'Use the Feynman Technique to make knowledge STICK'. But the short and sweet of it all is this: the best way to learn something is to teach it.
You don’t actually have to teach other people; all you have to do is explain your subject aloud—to your cat, a potted plant, or an imaginary sixth grader—from scratch, as though the student you're explaining it to knows nothing about the topic!
3. (Brainscape) digital flashcards
Okay now, this is our jam. Flashcards, particularly digital, are one of the most useful tools for active recall studying, a.k.a. efficient, effective studying. On one side of a flashcard, there is a question, which prompts you to actively recall the answer from memory. Only after you've answered it do you turn the card over to reveal the answer.
It's elegantly simple ... but Brainscape's flashcards have taken it further by marrying active recall with three other cognitive learning principles: spaced-repetition, metacognition, and interleaving practice. Together, these are the perfect artillery to optimize learning.
Best of all, you don't need to think about this. Just open the app and press STUDY, and our algorithm will show you exactly the flashcards you need to see to optimize your memorization right now.
Use the active recall study technique for your next exam
Active recall isn’t some complicated, mystical brain hack—it’s the key to learning faster and remembering longer. That’s why Brainscape’s algorithm is built around it.
So whether you’re aiming for straight A’s, acing a certification, or finally mastering Spanish (so you can stop butchering “gracias”), this is your secret weapon. Use it, and you won’t just pass your next exam—you’ll own it.
Now go forth, conquer your studies, and ride into the sunset with a brain full of knowledge.
And hey, if you want to nerd out about this with us, join the discussion on Reddit!
Sources
Butler, A. C. (2010). Repeated testing produces superior transfer of learning relative to repeated studying. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(5), 1118. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019902
Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772-775. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327
Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319(5865), 966-968. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1152408
McDaniel, M. A., Howard, D. C., & Einstein, G. O. (2009). The read-recite-review study strategy: Effective and portable. Psychological Science, 20(4), 516-522. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2009.02325.x
Nilson, L.(2010). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors. Jossey-Bass.