6 areas · ~5 minutes

How effective is your study system?

Rate 30 statements by how often you actually do them and get an evidence-based picture of the 6 key areas of your study system. Only the summary score is stored — individual answers are not sent anywhere.

It takes about 5 minutes. Answer honestly about what you actually do — not what you think you should be doing.

What the test measures
Preparation
Getting ready before you study: an overview, prior knowledge, a goal and pre-questions.
Making meaning
Explaining, connecting and picturing new information so that it makes sense and sticks.
Note-making
Notes as a tool: in your own words, showing connections and actually used later.
Retrieval practice
Pulling knowledge out of memory — the study technique with the strongest scientific evidence.
Spacing & interleaving
Spreading study across several days and mixing different types of problems.
Consolidation & self-monitoring
Practising beyond the first success and knowing exactly how good you actually are.
What is this test based on?
  • In a large review, practice testing and distributed practice received the highest utility ratings, while rereading and highlighting came out as the weakest techniques (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
  • Recalling from memory consolidates knowledge more strongly than repeated reading — the testing effect (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).
  • Studying spread out over time beats cramming it all at once (Cepeda et al., 2006), and interleaving problem types improves transfer of skills (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007).
  • Pre-questions and pretesting improve subsequent learning even when the initial answer is wrong (Richland et al., 2009).
  • Explaining in your own words, generating examples and visualising information deepen understanding — generative learning (Fiorella & Mayer, 2016).
  • Practising beyond the first correct answer keeps a skill durable (Rawson & Dunlosky, 2011), and comparing your own confidence with actual results guards against the illusion of familiarity (Bjork et al., 2013).

Your previous results

Click a row to see the full result.

overall score

Study system radar

Very good Room to optimise Needs work

Detailed analysis

If several areas are in the red zone, start with Retrieval practice and Spacing & interleaving — they have the strongest evidence in learning science — and then take on Preparation and Making meaning.