What is Cramming and its Effects?Strategies for Getting Rid of it.
→ Do you tired up from the habit of “Cramming”?
→ Do you want to memorize stuff for long-term retention?
→ Do you forget everything after some gap in study?
If yes, then let’s move on to reading. This blog is exactly for you.
The majority of students, when came to high & secondary schools or maybe even higher than that, they tried to memorize a lot of things in a short amount of time, which is called Cramming. You can simply say it Ratta in Urdu.
Cramming is the most widely used methodology for the preparation of exams or performance bases activities. The pressure of getting good grades, as well as engagement in other co-curricular activities, lead students to use this methodology. It is strictly discouraged by educators. According to them hurriedly coverage of things, for shallow recall in exams, caused long-term memory disorder.
H.E. Gorst stated:
As long as education is synonymous with cramming on an organized plan, it will continue to produce mediocrity.
Psychologist George A. Miller, who conducted research on memory in the 1950s, tested a lot of participants and worked on memory patterns for a long time. And then he presented his ‘Seven, Plus or Minus Two’ rule, which is also named as ‘Miller’s Law’.
The crux of his research is that:
It is scientific evidence that cramming works! But only in the short term. When students cram, they forget more over the long term.
Now, what is a method of active learning? How can we remember things for long term retention? what strategies should be adopted for long term retention of concepts?
After a lot of experiments and researches of phycologists, they explored the following study methods:
→ Spacing
→ Retrieval Practice
First, we will look for spacing.
Spacing
In 1885, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus sketched the spacing effect’s through a self-experiment that involved memorizing. In his experiments and research, he ended with the result that spacing methodology is far better over cramming.
Basically, The spacing effect demonstrates that learning is more effective when study sessions are spaced out. This effect shows that more information is encoded into long-term memory by spaced study sessions
After all, our memories are set up to record information slowly. It checked that a student who studied 3 days a week for 2 hours, is much better in long term retention, than the one who studied 9 hours in the last 4 days of exams.
Retrieval Practice
It is a methodology of recalling things from memory and then applying concepts through strategies like self-testing. In simple words, you can say it practice or practical implementation of concepts.
In our era, everybody wants to become a master, but a few want to endure the pain, the work, and the process that is required for such an outcome.
If your goal is mastery, whether you’re an author, musician, athlete, or speaker, you will practice far more than you perform.
And I’ll add here a famous quote:
“Practice makes a man perfect”
At last, I would say that stop being included in cramming. You can change this habit easily, and also start the practice of concepts for active learning.
Thanks for reading!!
