study tips – Cognition in Class

April 27, 2026April 28, 2026

Let’s Mix it Up: A Study Method That Actually Works!

How Interleaving seems harder, but works better.

By: Brailyn Zimmerman

Let me guess… you go to study for a test by rereading the same material, focusing on one subject for hours until it “feels” mastered, or doing the same problems over until you physically can’t, just to get to the exam and realize that all the cramming didn’t work as well as you thought.

It’s okay, you aren’t alone! Most of us study this way because it’s organized and productive, right? Cognitive psychology research suggests this may be one of the least effective ways to learn.

That disconnect is exactly why interleaving is such a game-changer. Mixing up different types of problems or topics during the study session instead of focusing on one at a time may feel harder in the moment, but research in cognitive psychology shows it actually leads to better learning and retention in the long run.¹

April 27, 2026April 28, 2026

Constantly studying but still lost? Well, organization might be the key to your solution

By: Chloe Pluger

Introduction

Have you ever stayed up hours on end studying: rereading the notes, writing everything down, even pulling an all nighter to open the test and thinking your still going to fail.

It’s very annoying when you know you put all that effort into studying. The issue is though the problem might not be how much you were studying all that information it could be the way you organized what you were learning.

While in college theres so much going on multiple classes, different deadlines, sports, and other responsibilities. Without having a clear schedule all the information you are told could start to come together or you could forget it. Now this is when cognitive psychology comes into play.

This post will be going over how organization affects memory, why your brain relies on structure to process the information, and how you can apply simple, research-backed strategies so you are able to change the bad study habits into more organized and effective ways to recall the information.

April 27, 2026April 28, 2026

How much Space? – Spacing Effect

By: Natallie Tobuk

Thinking back to my time as a freshman in college, I think that my advice to myself would be to rethink how I study for tests. I think that cramming for a test can be successful on occasion but doing it all the time will make your life more stressful than it needs to be. Procrastination was a method that I relied on throughout high school for assignments and even studying for tests and exams. Now that I have been in college for three years, I know that though I am a busy person, it is not effective and causes a lot of unnecessary stress. By rethinking how you study, you too can save yourself a lot of stressful nights and mornings by using the spacing effect to make your study sessions more effective.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Study Smarter, Not Harder: How “Levels of Processing” Can Change the Way You Learn

By: Braylon Boyer

If I could go back to my first year of college, I wouldn’t tell myself to study more, I would tell myself to study differently. Like most students I thought college was cramming everything to the night before exams and reread notes a million times. It felt productive, but the results didn’t always match my effort.

A concept that changes how we think about studying from cognitive psychology is Levels of Processing. Once you understand it, you stop wasting time on useless strategies and start using ones that work.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Think You Can Multitask? Think Again

By: Breannyn Dixon

Picture this: You have a test that you need to study for. You get ready at your desk with your textbook and notes to begin studying. Then your phone goes off and before you know it, you are scrolling on TikTok or Instagram while trying to study. Does this sound like you before tests?

In this scenario, you can feel like you are getting a lot more done than you are because you are studying and scrolling or answering friends on your phone. There is a misconception that when you are working through multiple tasks at the same time, or multitasking, you are getting a lot done faster. However, in reality, you are actually less productive. This is called divided attention, and it could be the real reason why you are not able to remember the material you try to study before a big test or final. So how do you avoid falling into the trap of divided attention? We will dive into different solutions for your scrolling time and study time not overlapping.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Wait… Did That Actually Happen?

How Your Memory Can Be Rewritten and What to Do About It

By: Railynn Brown

Introduction

Have you ever been talking with a friend about something that happened, and suddenly your memory of it starts to change? Maybe you were completely sure about what you saw or learned, but then someone describes it a little differently, and now you’re second-guessing yourself. This actually happened to me during my first year of college when I was studying with a group and realized later that something I “remembered” for the exam was completely wrong.

Picture this: you’re talking with a friend about something that happened last week, and they confidently say, “Remember when that car sped through the stop sign?” You pause. You thought the car just rolled through it, but now you’re not so sure. As it turns out, the way someone describes something after the fact can actually change how you remember it.

In this post, I’m going to break down the misinformation effect and source monitoring errors in a way that actually connects to your experience as a college student. Once you understand how easily your memory can be influenced, it becomes a lot easier to avoid studying the wrong thing and walking into an exam feeling confident only to be disappointed with the results.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Want to be more confident before a test? Well then, Never Eat Soggy Waffles!

By: Naitzy Garcia

You’re studying and studying, but can’t retain the information, no matter how many times you review it? However, if you were asked for directions, you’d know to Never Eat Soggy Waffles? That is a mnemonic; a golden tool to help create shortcuts for information we want to remember. This same tool is used by top participants at the “World Memory Championship”, who credit their success not to the anatomy of their brain, but to their training with mnemonics.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Way of studying; Relating words to survival value

By: Joshua Stanley

Studying for classes or a test can be stressful at times, and prevent you from fully understanding the full material. Even when you prepare for a big exam you may not remember everything you studied and that can lead to an unwanted grade. A way to make your studying easier is by relating words or information to survival value. Doing this will make studying more effective because it taps into how human memory naturally works.

Our brains are wired to prioritise information that seems important for survival, so when something feels relevant to staying alive or solving real-life problems, the brain processes it more deeply and remembers it better. For example, instead of trying to memorize vocabulary or facts you can ask yourself how that information might help you in a real life situation, that way the information comes easier to remember because you related it to a real world experience. Say you were studying biology terms, you should think about how knowing them could help you identify or understand an illness.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

The Study Hack You Need: Chunking

By: Cole Smith

When I was in High School, I found myself studying for tests the night before and cramming all the material into one night study sessions. Once I got into college, I realized my prior study habits would not get me far , given how challenging the courses can be. Little did I know that the key to studying was actually something I had been doing since I was 6 years old! When you were a kid, did the story of your parents making you memorize their phone number or a street address by learning each part sound familiar? If it does, well then, you are already familiar with the concept of chunking! Splitting up the numbers in your parents’ phone number and memorizing each section, or by splitting up your street address and memorizing the number, street, and zip code separately, and then putting it all together, is a prime example of how chunking information works (1)!

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

You Think You Understand… But Your Brain Is Guessing: How Top-Down Processing Affects Studying

By: Kayleigh Zerrusen

Introduction

If you were to ask me to travel back to my first semester of college, I would give myself the advice to find a better way to study instead of just looking over notes that I copied and pasted from class. Most students will find themselves spending hours on end looking over notes and reading through textbooks. This tends to lead them to feel unprepared during exams and tests. Students think that this is caused from a lack of effort, but it could be the way your brain is processing information. An important idea from cognitive psychology that explains this issue is top-down processing. This process shows how knowledge that you have been taught previously and other experiences shape the way we comprehend and understand new information. Although top-down processing can be useful, there is also a possibility it can lead to misunderstanding when we study if it is not used the correct way.