Today I want to talk about a popular studying technique amongst students - highlighting.
Let me tell you about a scientific study
For those that have been my students for the last few years know that I love to teach based on proven science and not merely what someone thinks works well.So, several years ago scientists carried out an important piece of research where they got Undergraduates (university students) to read 8,000 word articles about boredom and city life.
They were divided into 3 groups:(1) control (No highlighting)(2) passive highlighting (This group was given text which was already highlighted)(3) active highlighting. (This group was told to highlight particularly important material in the text)
They were each tested a week later and the group that actively highlighted did no better than the control group :(Yes, unfortunately this very popular idea amongst students is not something that makes any difference to your learning abilities. To see the original research please check out (Fowler & Barker 1974 in Journal of Applied Psychology).
This basic result has been replicated many times.
It is worse than you thought
In most situations that have been examined and with most participants, highlighting does little to boost performance.
As a matter of fact it might actually hurt performance on higher-level tasks that require inference making.
Here is Prof. Dunlovsky (2013), someone who has done extensive research into study techniques–“When students are using a highlighter, they often focus on one concept at a time and are less likely to integrate the information they’re reading into a larger whole. This could undermine comprehension of that material”.
Unfortunately many students are committed to ineffective strategies, hopefully this newsletter highlights to you one of those terrible techniques.
Perhaps I should run a course for parents on evidence based learning techniques in the future?
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