The scientific literature evaluating learning techniques stretches back decades and across thousands of articles and shows that the most popular techniques, like rereading and highlighting, are some of the least effective:
Highlighting and underlining led the authors’ list of ineffective learning strategies. Although they are common practices, studies show they offer no benefit beyond simply reading the text. Some research even indicates that highlighting can get in the way of learning; because it draws attention to individual facts, it may hamper the process of making connections and drawing inferences. Nearly as bad is the practice of rereading, a common exercise that is much less effective than some of the better techniques you can use. Lastly, summarizing, or writing down the main points contained in a text, can be helpful for those who are skilled at it, but again, there are far better ways to spend your study time. Highlighting, underlining, rereading and summarizing were all rated by the authors as being of “low utility.”
The best practices aren’t well known outside the psych lab:
Take distributed practice, for example. This tactic involves spreading out your study sessions, rather than engaging in one marathon. Cramming information at the last minute may allow you to get through that test or meeting, but the material will quickly disappear from memory. It’s much more effective to dip into the material at intervals over time. And the longer you want to remember the information, whether it’s two weeks or two years, the longer the intervals should be.
The second learning strategy that is highly recommended by the report’s authors is practice testing. Yes, more tests — but these are not for a grade. Research shows that the mere act of calling information to mind strengthens that knowledge and aids in future retrieval. While practice testing is not a common strategy — despite the robust evidence supporting it—there is one familiar approach that captures its benefits: using flash cards. And now flash cards can be presented in digital form, via apps like Quizlet, StudyBlue and FlashCardMachine. Both spaced-out learning, or distributed practice, and practice tests were rated as having “high utility” by the authors.
In my experience rereading (and pondering) is not just helpful but nearly essential when studying a subject which can be described in a small dense text. (E.g., Landau and Lifschitz Mechanics, or Spivak Calculus on Manifolds, or the smallest book I have on my shelves, the Stephenson-Yang lecture notes on “sabaki” in the game of Go.) Quite possibly rereading is less helpful in other cases, and quite possibly in those cases people tend to reread too much. But given the existence of cases where (assuming I’m right, despite my lack of controlled experiment) rereading is nearly essential, the “nearly as bad is the practice of rereading [...] much less effective than some of the better techniques” result reported can’t be quite correct. Perhaps before trying to state categorically whether rereading is not an effective strategy, the researchers and/or the CreativityPost author should back off and try to define the boundaries of their learning problem more carefully.
For comparison, spreading out studying over time really does seem to be helpful in acquiring and retaining knowledge, with no exceptions I can think of. My impression is that that this is a rather general property of thinking and memory, not confined to academic study but also present in e.g. learning sports or learning cooking or learning the geography of an area.
I think you’re completely correct that studying a dense text means rereading and pondering. I think it’s the pondering that matters most though. You need to struggle with the material to learn it. If the text is sufficiently dense, simply rereading it may be a worthy struggle.
My career has been in a science so this is what worked for me.
Math: doing problems and more problems and more problems from algebra past higher math. Do every problem in the book. It gets easier. Twenty five to thirty problems a day sees to be a good amount
Chemistry and Physics: do the problems and more problems.
Keep in a loose-leaf binder the problems with solutions. Buy more binders.