Which Learning Strategy Is The Best?

The correct application of learning strategies increases your learning performance. They absorb and process information more effectively, making your learning process more efficient. You only do what has been proven to lead you to success. Using the same learning strategy(s) over the long term creates a routine that makes learning easier for you.

We sometimes even use learning strategies unconsciously! So, it may well be that you are already using one or the other strategy without knowing it.

What Are Learning Strategies?

A strategy is a goal-oriented sequence of actions. A learning strategy is a sequence of actions that helps us achieve the learning goal. In contrast to the learning strategy, learning techniques are more specific and describe concrete partial actions. For example, taking notes is a learning strategy, while outlining your paper and highlighting key terms on your notes are learning techniques.

But not only learning strategies will help you to achieve good results, useful resources, like an online essay writing service, would be of great help in a difficult situation.

What Learning Strategies Are There?

Learning strategies go far beyond memorizing strategies. Time management, motivation, and workplace design are also among the areas that we strategically design when learning. There are many different ways to categorize learning strategies. I will now introduce you to two categorizations.

Cognitive Strategies

Cognitive strategies include all strategies that describe how we process information. They include memorization, elaboration, transformation, and reductive-organizing strategies. With their help, we learn by heart, gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter, and integrate new knowledge into existing knowledge networks. We convert our knowledge into other forms of representation and break down information to the essentials. All these activities are part of our cognitive learning strategies. Through these strategies we acquire knowledge.

Metacognitive Strategies

The second group of learning strategies is metacognitive strategies. This is the generic term for all strategies of planning, monitoring, and regulation of learning. They help us to control the learning process. You can imagine metacognition as a control center. This is where your cognitive strategies are monitored and controlled. Your meta-memory has stored knowledge about the different learning strategies, with the help of which you know about the correct application of a learning strategy. You can assess which learning strategy is particularly suitable for which content and which tools you need to implement it successfully. A very important metacognitive strategy is regulation. If you have realized that your previous learning strategy has not been successful, you can now either change individual learning techniques or try out a new learning strategy.

Resource Management

The third category summarizes all resource management strategies. You use these strategies to create good conditions for learning. When it comes to internal resource management, strategies of motivation, effort, and maintaining attention play a role. With good internal resource management, you work in a focused, concentrated, and motivated manner. With the help of external resource management, you ensure that your working environment is well designed. The sensible design of your workplace is, for example, a good strategy for external resource management.

Time Management – ​​An Important Learning Strategy!

By the way, the most well-known support strategy is time management. You’re doing it mostly unconsciously, but you’re structuring your study time all the time! Scheduling is long-term and short-term. You usually plan weeks before the exam what you have to learn and when. You also use time management to structure your day in the morning. Time management allows you to acquire more knowledge in less time and create more free time. Planning breaks is also part of time management. This support strategy should not be underestimated.

So, Which Learning Strategy Is The Best?

As you can probably already guess, the answer to this question is not a short one. There are so many learning strategies that there is guaranteed to be a suitable learning strategy for every task format and learning material.

However, the following applies: When learning, in most cases you use more than just one learning strategy, at least one primary strategy or cognitive strategy and in any case supporting strategies. In addition, when studying for an exam, you often do not get by with just a few primary strategies. Knowing information by heart and having understood it is not enough for a good exam! In order to be able to reflect your knowledge in the exam, you usually also need to organize or reduce your learning strategy, with the help of which you can save what you have learned in a sorted manner and retrieve it in a more targeted manner. Successful acquisition of knowledge requires reflection on the subject matter.