What is Active Recall?

What Active Recall is and Why it Works

Active recall is a type of study method where you retrieve information without looking at any of your notes or resources.

It helps substantially with:

Information Retention: Active recall forces your brain to search for the answer as opposed to passively reviewing material, which in turn strengthens your memory pathways for that information.

Think of it like building a muscle. In order to build muscle, you need to present your muscle with a challenge for it to overcome and adapt, aka progressive overload.

Active recall is the same concept. In order for your brain to remember new information, you need to present it with challenges it must adapt to. By forcing your brain to recall information it’s never had to recall before, you are making it actively work, and therefore “building your brain muscle”, aka building your memory pathways for that information.

Highlighting Knowledge Gaps: What also makes active recall so efficient is its ability to highlight what you don’t know. If you aren’t able to retrieve information on a certain topic, you immediately know it needs more review, as opposed to rereading material and hoping something sticks.

*Note: Although the process of active recall may seem like it takes a lot more time than other study methods, it actually ends up saving you time in the long run because your study sessions become more efficient!

Recognition vs. Recall: What’s the Difference?

Have you ever studied before an exam and said to yourself “I’ll know it when I see it”? I know I have! This might work for simple style questions like multiple choice (ex: recognizing a drug name as one of the options), but it won’t get you far in more complex question types, where it requires you to recall information and apply it to answer a clinical scenario.

Recognition is the ability to identify something after seeing it, whereas recall is the ability to pull information out of your brain without any stimulus. In nursing school not only will active recall allow you to retain more information in order to apply to questions, but it will greatly help you in being able to apply it later in your career!

Recalling information means you can retrieve it from memory without any prompts or cues. This is what you need for application-based exams and real-world scenarios. Nursing school doesn’t just ask you to recognize the right answer,  it asks you to apply your knowledge to clinical situations.

Recognition might get you through a multiple-choice question if you’re lucky. Recall helps you actually understand and apply what you’ve learned so you can apply it anywhere.

Passive vs. Active Learning

One of the keys to active recall is that it is an active style of learning, meaning it requires you to fully engage and interact with the material you’re trying to learn.

Passive learning may feel productive because you are technically “busy” and spending time studying, but it actually wastes time in the long run because the time spent studying does not lead to retention of the material.

Most students make the mistake of sticking with passive methods like rereading, highlighting, copying notes, etc. because it feels less uncomfortable- but that discomfort is exactly what is needed to build long term retention.

How to Use Active Recall in Your Study Routine

The nice thing about active recall is there are multiple ways you can use it! Here are practical ways to incorporate active recall into your study sessions:

*Remember, you should not be looking at any of your notes for any of these!

Blurting: After lecture or learning a topic, take out a blank piece of paper and write down everything you can remember about the topic. It does not have to be organized at all- just focus on writing down as much as you can!

Summarizing: Write what you learned in your own words in a condensed, shorter version, eliminating any “fluff”.

Flashcards: You can use physical or digital formats for this- the most important thing is to make sure you don’t look at the answer before answering yourself!

Teach out loud: Teach the topic to a friend, or record yourself and listen back to it, comparing it against your notes afterwards. If you are able to explain the topic in simple terms, that signifies you have a good understanding of it!

Practice questions: Focus on NCLEX style questions as they are more complex and require application of knowledge to use in a clinical scenario.

Common Mistakes

When I first started using active recall, I made pretty much every mistake in the book. I’d get frustrated when I couldn’t remember something and immediately flip to the answer. I’d breeze past what I got right and ignore what I got wrong. It took time to realize that how you practice active recall matters just as much as doing it in the first place. Here are the most common mistakes to avoid:

Giving up too quickly: If you are having a really hard time recalling information, don’t immediately look at the answer! Try to write down everything you can remember, even if it feels random and fragmented. Then check the answer to fill in the gaps.

Looking at the answer too soon: Remember, if it feels challenging, that’s good! That is how you know it’s working. Sit with the discomfort of not knowing it for a minute. That is the feeling of actively building your memory pathway!

Only reviewing things you got right: As you get to later sessions of active recall on a topic, they should actually get shorter, as you should be focusing more on what you don’t know and just reviewing the information you already know. Reviewing what you got wrong and retesting yourself on that is where learning occurs!

How Often to Practice Active Recall

When I first started using active recall, I wasn’t sure how often to do it. Should I do it every day? Only before exams? After some trial and error, I figured out a rhythm that actually worked. Here’s what I recommend:

The key to making active recall work is consistency. You want to have multiple active recall sessions on a specific topic spaced out (aka spaced repetition) to allow your brain to “forget” the information and make your brain have to recall it again. Over time through multiple sessions, that is how the information gets retained.

You may see recommendations online to do active recall daily, but in nursing school with the plethora of information being taught, clinicals, papers, plus balancing that with work and a personal life, this might not be possible- and that’s okay! Here is what a realistic active recall schedule might look like for one topic:

Day 1: Lecture on the topic Summarize and Revise notes (Active recall session 1)

Day 4-6: Recall session 2

Weekly until exam: Recall session on topic weekly

*Note: switch up the methods of using active recall- for example, swap flashcards for practice questions some sessions to give your brain more variety of how to retrieve information

2-3 days before exam: Recall daily

(These will be short, focused sessions and more like “reviews”)

Now, when you add in multiple topics per exam, this can get a bit hard to keep track of each recall session for all the different topics. That is why we made our Nursing School Success Planner, to help keep you organized throughout your semester and be able to see everything in one place. You can check it out here: Checkout the Nursing School Success Planner

Final Takeaway

If you find yourself spending hours studying, then struggling to answer questions when you get to your exams- it’s not that you aren’t cut out for nursing, it’s just that your study technique is probably not working for you.

When I switched from spending hours copying my textbook to a more active form of studying, my grades improved drastically and things just started to click.

So instead of passively reviewing your notes, try active recall your next study session and let us know how it goes!