How to Retain the Information in your Neurofeedback Course
We recognize that learning neurofeedback requires students to retain a great deal of new material, and it may have been quite a while since people who are established in their professional lives have consciously studied.
What follows are tips to increase your retention of material as you engage with any of Sadar Psychological’s courses.
What is studying?
In the simplest sense, studying is the act of teaching yourself information. If you’re taking a neurofeedback course, you undoubtedly understand the brain better than most, but here’s a quick overview of what makes a successful study strategy just in case.
When you study well, you transfer information from short-term to long-term memory. Here, it’s important to recognize that the brain is almost always in “forgetting mode” because most of what happens during the day doesn’t need to be in long-term memory. It’s important for your brain to let go of lots of information, precisely so it can work efficiently when it needs to. What did you eat for breakfast last Monday? Who cares! But what are the steps to getting good impedance2? That’s worth remembering when begin neurofeedback with your first client.
Studying needs to be a conscious choice to shift the brain into “remembering mode.”
Scientific studies show that most people need to see a piece of information at least four times in order to remember it. In between those exposures, it’s important to sleep because that’s when the brain moves information from the hippocampus (where short-term and working memory reside) to the cortex (where long-term memory lives).
Science also tells us that recall is superior to review and we tend to remember information that we connect to what we already know. All this means that successful study plans include these practices:
- Exposure to information four or more times over multiple days
- Respecting our sleep schedules over multiple days
- Speaking, moving, or making something topic-related
- Making explicit connections to prior knowledge
Ongoing Study Routines
For content that is particularly challenging – as neurofeedback is for many – the best approach to studying is to establish a routine that leads to ongoing review of material. Here’s how that might look:
Multiple Exposures
Exposure 1: Take notes while watching the lecture video. If you don’t yet have a notetaking system you like, the Cornell Method is well proven.
Exposure 2: On the day that material is delivered, identify key words or concepts and write down any questions for clarification. (For Cornell Notes, complete the left-hand column).
Exposure 3: The day after material is delivered, synthesize information. This might mean summarizing notes in 1-2 sentences or writing possible test questions.
Exposure 4: Once a week, create a one-page summary of all of your notes for the course. Depending on your preferred learning style and the content at hand, this might take the form of a mind-map, a timeline, or a simple outline.
Recall vs Review
How to get the most out of course quizzes
It’s also a good idea to take all of the quizzes in the Didactic Training for BCIA Neurofeedback Certification. You might take the quiz right after watching the lecture to activate the recall mechanisms which are shown to improve retention by as much as 60% and/or you can use the quizzes to assess your retention following multiple exposures to the information. In either case, the best learning will occur if you take quizzes without the aide of your notes and only use notes to correct mistakes.
The Approach
Assuming your intent is to take the full exam at the end of the course, prepping for exam day will require some planning, prioritizing information, maintaining focus, and time management. The following framework can be helpful on that front:
- Make a plan: As exam day approaches, identify four (or more) specific days and times that you can schedule a study session.
- Be specific: Many students find it difficult to start studying because success and time are both undefined. To make studying more accessible, identify a specific strategy you will use during each study session as well as an estimate of how long it will take to complete.
- Write it down: Record those times and specific goals for each session.
- Mix it up: The more variety you incorporate into your study sessions, the better it is for retention.
Creative Study Strategies
Depending on your strengths and preferences, some of the following strategies will work better than others, but mixing it up will improve both retention and engagement for almost every learner.
Synthesize
- Study Guide in Phases: Take quizzes multiple times. Complete it without your notes, use your notes to fill in gaps, and take it again.
- Reorganize Notes: Often times lecture notes lack clear organization because we don’t know what’s coming next. Re-write them based on what kind of organization best represents the content (chronologically, by topic, by type of information, etc).
- Cheat Sheets: Imagine you have to catch a colleague up on the most important information from the course (or an individual unit). Make a one-page cheat sheet to help them out.
- Write a Test: Deciding what questions you’d include if you were developing the test helps you clarify what’s most important. Writing the “wrong” choice for multiple choice questions also helps solidify details.
Make Connections
- Poem/Song/Mnemonic Device: These are classics and have the added benefit of mapping new information onto melodies or other structures that can support recall.
- Concept Maps: Mind maps create visual representations of the connections between ideas. The more you incorporate shapes, colors, and drawings, the more you’re giving your brain to hold onto in relation to the content. After you make your mind map, compare it to your notes to be sure you didn’t leave anything out.
- Venn Diagram: Pick a related topic and really compare and contrast. This might work well for consolidating your understanding of neurofeedback as it relates to a modality with which you are already comfortable.
Visual Strategies
- Color Code: Too much color coding can be distracting, but if you’re strategic it can be helpful. A great first step to preparing for an exam is to go through your notes and mark ideas green if you know them well, yellow if you’re shaky, and red if you need to ask for support. That way, you can spend the rest of your time on the concepts you most need to review. This process might also help you focus time with a mentor.
- Symbols: Annotating notes or text with symbols both ensures that you won’t mark up too much information for it to be helpful and gives your brain something visual to process. Favorite symbols include “?” for ideas that are confusing or “!” for content that surprises you. Try to identify about 4-5 symbols for a single study session.
- Post-Its: For a twist on flashcards, put information on post-its and organize them on a wall. You might arrange key dates in order, match definitions to key words, or sort ideas into “don’t know,” “learning”, and “know.”
- Drawing: Creating images that represent ideas is powerful. One great way to do this is to draw portraits of historical figures and include at least three accessories that represent their life and impact.
Speaking & Listening
- Voice Memos: Record voice memos of key information and listen to the memo on your commute or in down time between activities.
- Voice to Text: Turn on the voice to text feature in a Google doc and talk through everything you know about an idea. Check what you said against your notes to see what you missed.
- Paired Studying: Studying with a colleague (or your dyad partner!) leads to questions that you might not have thought of and includes both verbal and audio processing of ideas.
We’re fully invested in supporting you as you learn neurofeedback, and have developed practicums, monthly Q&As, and Case Study Groups to ensure that you can master this content. If you have other ideas about how we can help, let us know!
