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Exam Revision Tips with Ibz Mo

2018-03-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Ibz Mo · recording, 16:30 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: Aimed at students, Evidence-based framing

Ali, a final-year Cambridge medical student, and Cambridge psychology student and YouTuber Ibz Mo compare how they revise: Ibz writes essays in three drafts and memorises grid plans, while Ali memorised about 50 essay plans for his essay-based psychology exams and recommends spaced repetition and active recall over rereading.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Ali and Ibz Mo introduce themselves; Ibz on his GCSEs, A-levels and getting into Cambridge

  • ★★ Ibz Mo (Ibrahim Mohamed) studies Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Wolfson College, Cambridge. — 00:00:00 · Ibz Mo, University of Cambridge
  • ★★ Ibz Mo says his YouTube channel documents his time at Cambridge as a person of colour and a working-class student from a poor school. — 00:00:29 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ibz Mo says his GCSE grades were two Bs, three Cs and two Ds. — 00:00:29 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ibz Mo says he worked very hard at A-level, got his grades and got into Cambridge, and had to really learn how to study and revise. — 00:00:29 · Ibz Mo, University of Cambridge
  • ★★★ Ali says he will make an in-depth series on his channel in a few weeks on the psychology research about effective study techniques; this video with Ibz Mo is a broad overview. — 00:00:58 · Ibz Mo

00:01:49 — Naming Ali's planned series of evidence-based study tips

00:02:22 — How Ibz writes essays; Ali on stating the argument in the introduction and planning in advance

  • ★★ Ibz Mo writes humanities-style essays in three drafts: a first that dumps everything he knows (about 5,000 words for a 2,000-word essay), a second that edits each point and adds evidence, and a final check of links and references. — 00:02:22 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ibz Mo starts an essay from his own initial thoughts on the question and puts them in his essay plan; he turns to the long reading list first only when he has none. — 00:03:03 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ibz Mo says psychology essays at Cambridge need lots of evidence: an essay on language development he wrote with theory alone came back from his supervisor as half-baked. — 00:03:33 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ibz Mo reads only the abstract of a psychology article, at most the abstract and the conclusion. — 00:04:02 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ibz Mo now writes his essay introduction last, so that it announces only the points the essay actually covers. — 00:04:31 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★★ Ali advises stating an essay's argument in the introduction and arguing it throughout: the GCSE and A-level mark schemes he saw gave the highest marks for a sustained argument, rather than a thesis held back until the conclusion. — 00:05:00
  • ★★ Ibz Mo says that, unlike sociology A-level essays that took the reader on a journey, psychology essays must give clear answers backed by evidence in plain sentences. — 00:05:47 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ali says planning an essay in advance is very useful, and that studies support spider diagrams: the topic in the middle with a broad overview around it. — 00:05:47
  • ★ Ali says the sodium-potassium pump uses 40% of the body's energy because it is in all the neurons. — 00:06:44

00:07:11 — How Ali memorised about 50 essay plans for his psychology exams

  • ★★ Ali studied psychology in his third year at Cambridge, examined entirely by essays: four papers of three essays each, with an hour per essay. — 00:07:11
  • ★★★ Ali says he got a first in third-year psychology and came joint top of the year, which he puts down to his essay-plan method. — 00:07:46
  • ★★★ For his essay-based psychology exams Ali predicted about 50 possible essay titles from the lecture notes and subjects, made an essay plan with about seven references for each, and memorised all of them by drawing spider diagrams over and over. — 00:07:46 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ In Ali's psychology exams eight of the 12 essays matched plans he had prepared; for the other four he drew a quick spider diagram from his other plans just before writing. — 00:08:16

00:08:43 — Spaced repetition and Ali's revision spreadsheet; Ibz's grid essay plans

  • ★★ Ali says he has no photographic memory: his exam results came from the spider-diagram method and spaced repetition. — 00:08:45 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ Ali says studies show people forget at an exponential rate: most of what is revised today is gone by tomorrow, but each revisit makes it last longer, and a revisit a week later may hold for about a month. (hedged) — 00:09:14 · spaced repetition
  • ★★★ Ali recommends spaced repetition: he kept a spreadsheet of his topics and revisited each the next day, a week later and a month later, starting about three months before his exams. — 00:09:14 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ Ibz Mo says essay plans let him answer whatever question came up in A-level psychology, and that he will try memorising essay plans as Ali did. — 00:09:56 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ali memorised about 10 to 15 essay plans for each of his four psychology papers, enough to cover at least three questions he could answer. — 00:10:29
  • ★★ Ibz Mo's exam essay plans are a grid of 12 boxes with the title, introduction, conclusion and a few words in between, which he can memorise the morning before the exam. — 00:10:59 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ibz Mo says his grades this year (2018), two 1s and two 2s (as heard), are lower because he puts less effort into essays that do not count towards his final grade. — 00:10:59 · Ibz Mo

00:11:55 — Active recall: testing yourself and the rereading study

  • ★★★ Ali calls active recall the second key study technique after spaced repetition: testing yourself in a low-stakes way, outside the exam, by consistently asking yourself questions. — 00:12:01 · active recall, spaced repetition

    “testing yourself in a low-stakes fashion”

  • ★★ Ibz Mo tests himself with his flatmate, who is on the same course, by bringing the material into jokes and everyday conversation. — 00:12:01 · Ibz Mo, active recall

  • ★★ Ali quizzes himself on medicine with friends: over lunch one of them throws out a question. — 00:12:30 · active recall
  • ★★ Ali paraphrases a quote whose author he cannot recall: retrieving a fact from the brain matters far more than putting it in, so recalling is more efficient than rereading. — 00:12:53 · active recall
  • ★★★ Ali describes a study of university students answering questions on a passage: reading it once did worst, four times second worst, once plus a mind map better, and once followed by recalling answers best; he says self-testing was four times more efficient than rereading. — 00:13:22 · active recall
  • ★★★ Ali sees rereading as the biggest problem among his school friends, who took three hours over a science topic because they only reread; the secret, he says, is making questions for yourself and testing yourself. — 00:13:51 · active recall

00:14:47 — Closing: music while studying, the coming series and a Patreon joke

  • ★★ Ibz Mo says he made one video on how to study and cannot keep making more, because you have to stick to what you know works for you. — 00:14:53 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ On music while studying, Ali says instrumentals are okay and music with lyrics is worse, but if music motivates you to work, that probably outweighs the drawback. (hedged) — 00:14:53
  • ★★ Ali says the evidence on whether highlighting or making notes while studying is good gives a short answer of probably not. (hedged) — 00:14:53 · active recall

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Mentioned

Central: active recall · Ibz Mo · spaced repetition

Also: University of Cambridge

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