in this video we will look at how studying time spent with material out of class or assignments fits with our understanding of learning this video provides context to the rest of the module let's start with comparing class time in a high school course versus class time in a college course a full year high school course is equivalent to a one semester college course a high school course meets for two semesters that is fifteen weeks five times a week for about an hour resulting in about a hundred and fifty hours of course time an equivalent college course meets for one semester about 15 weeks a course generally meets about three times a week for one hour resulting in about 45 hours of course instruction the difference in class time between the equivalent high school course and college course is just over a hundred hours to make up that a hundred hour difference you are expected to spend time out of class studying I tell you this to say that college courses expect over a hundred hours of out of class learning and you have to make this happen you need to develop skills to get yourself to spend time outside of class learning and skills to use that time effectively studying outside of class is essential to your long-term learning let's discuss studying in the context of our learning diagram studying enhances our ability to understand an idea also called storage drink through elaboration and enhances our ability to retrieve an idea also called retrieval strength through retrieval practice studying helps us get an idea stuck in our long-term memory and helps us get access to that idea more quickly you can see where elaboration and retrieval fit on the learning diagram we are helping our working memory get better at quickly accessing and using what is stored in our long-term memory to solve questions or problems that exist in the world this is called learning studying makes up two phases of our learning cycle the same day or soon after class you should reengage the material for 25 minutes to elaborate on it make sure you understand the idea well and Network it with other things you know if you have a good grasp of the idea you should spend some time retrieving it you can act is retrieving an idea by doing a practice quiz in the back of your book or explaining that idea to another person sometime before the next class period ideally three times a week you should spend 25 minutes reviewing older content from the class and doing elaboration if needed looking up an idea you don't understand or have forgotten thinking of new examples to explain an abstract idea drawing out the idea and sketch form to show relationships and you should also do some retrieval quiz yourself on the key concepts or explain an idea to appear if you study effectively in a spaced out way the learning like the learning cycle encourages you will learn things far more effectively and efficiently than if you only study before a test additionally effective study takes effort your brain should feel a bit tired afterwards the strategies we will discuss in this module will encourage deep thinking