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Study with Me + How I take Notes

2019-10-24 · Study with me · Ali · recording, 6:04 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Aimed at students, Evidence-based framing, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

In a study-with-me evening after work, Ali, now a physiology supervisor at Girton College, Cambridge, prepares a supervision and explains his rule of thumb: taking notes with the book open is fine while first understanding a topic, but once it is understood, test yourself with active recall and spaced repetition.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Getting home after work and putting off studying with chores

00:00:33 — Preparing a physiology supervision at Girton: lecture slides, Keynote and notes in Notion

  • ★★★ Ali has become a physiology supervisor at Girton College, University of Cambridge, and will teach physiology every week to 10 first-year medical students. — 00:00:33 · Girton College, University of Cambridge, Supervision
  • ★ To prepare a supervision, Ali works on a large monitor with three windows: the lecture slides on the right, his own Keynote slides in the middle and Notion on the left for brief notes. — 00:01:02 · Notion

  • ★★★ To understand anything, new or old, Ali says you should always be telling yourself the story in your head, and research whatever part of it you are not happy with. — 00:01:32 · Google

    “We should always be telling ourselves the story in our heads.”

  • ★★ Ali says the Cambridge medicine course puts a big emphasis on experimental evidence: students get extra marks for knowing the historical context and the experiments behind what is now taken as fact. — 00:01:32 · University of Cambridge

  • ★★ In Notion Ali writes down the important names and dates of experiments, expanding an item into a page when needed, to build a database of experimental evidence for writing essays and making active recall flashcards later. — 00:02:08 · Notion, active recall
  • ★★ Ali says summarising content with the book open is not an effective way to retain information compared with active recall, spaced repetition and interleaved practice, backed by a mountain of evidence. — 00:02:08 · active recall, spaced repetition, interleaving
  • ★★ Asked often by students how he takes notes, Ali says he is working on a video discussing note-taking in depth. — 00:02:08

00:02:22 — How he takes notes: fine while understanding, testing once memorising

  • ★★★ Ali's rule of thumb: taking notes with the book open is fine in the understanding phase of studying, especially when synthesising information from different sources into one place. — 00:02:46

    “note-taking is fine when we're trying to understand the content for the first time”

  • ★★★ Once the content is understood, Ali says, taking notes on it again and again is a very ineffective revision strategy: write questions or flashcards and test yourself with active recall and spaced repetition. — 00:02:46 · active recall, spaced repetition

00:03:43 — Dinner with a CuriosityStream documentary (sponsor read)

00:04:13 — The Nernst equation, a break, and past exam questions to end the session

  • ★★ Ali calls testing yourself as you go along, for example with past exam papers, another really important part of effective studying, to make sure you actually understand the subject. — 00:04:42
  • ★★ Ali finds going through questions a very satisfying way to end a study or teaching session: if the work was done properly they should be fairly doable, and if not, you know what to address next time. — 00:05:11
  • ★ By 11pm Ali had gone through four lectures of content, understood most of it and formed an hour-long teaching session around it. — 00:05:11 · Supervision

00:05:40 — Reading The Faithful and the Fallen on the Kindle before sleep

  • ★★ Ali is reading John Gwynne's The Faithful and the Fallen series on his Kindle in bed and calls it pretty awesome, so gripping and enjoyable that it keeps him up much later than he should. — 00:05:40 · Kindle

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Asked whether he listens to music while taking notes, Ali says yes: he has a study-with-me playlist on Spotify. — creator comment · Spotify

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: active recall · Supervision

Also: People: Ali Abdaal's mother · John Gwynne

Works: The Faithful and the Fallen

Organizations: CuriosityStream · Girton College · Google · University of Cambridge

Concepts: interleaving · spaced repetition

Products: Keynote · Kindle · Notion

Only in the description or credits: Spotify

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