How to remember what you've learnt

First the bad news. Within 20 minutes you will probably have forgotten more than 40% of what you are now reading; within a month you will have forgotten more than 75% of it.¹ This is the case if you are learning the material; your recall will probably be much worse if you are simply reading it. Over 100 years ago Ebbinghaus, using himself as the subject, did research on remembering lists of syllables and came up with these results. One of the most interesting aspects of his research is that we forget material most quickly within the first 20 minutes.

So how can we remember more of what we've learnt? One way is by using the PQRST technique.² To a cardiologist this sounds like the waves on an electrocardiogram, but to a canny learner it means that to remember effectively you should preview what you are about to learn (P), ask yourself questions that you would like to find the answers to (Q), read the material (R), recite the material to yourself (S), and then test yourself by trying to recall the facts that you have learnt (T).

And what has all this got to do with online learning? On bmjlearning.com we publish online interactive case histories. In these we preview the material that you are about to learn, ask you questions to prepare you for what you are about to learn and to establish your baseline knowledge, give you bite sized chunks of information, and finally allow you to test yourself on the material you've learnt. One of our most recent learning modules is on the diagnosis and management of chronic fatigue syndrome. It outlines how to differentiate chronic fatigue syndrome from normal tiredness and depression and gives useful tips on what investigations you should do in primary care and what treatment you should advise. It takes less than an hour to do, and you can find it and more than 30 other case histories on www.bmjlearning.com.