What is Active Recall? How to use it to ace your exams ?

What is Active Recall? How to use it to ace your exams ?
Active recall is one of the best, most powerful, and efficient ways to learn anything, quickly. Here's everything you need to know!
There isn’t a student under the sun who hasn’t faced down an exam like a sweaty cowboy in a gunfight, hand hovering over their holstered weapon, fierce and ready to draw, only to discover in the trembling heat of the moment that *click* the chambers are empty and you’re in deep doo-doo.

What is the active recall study technique?

Active recall studying is when you actively stimulate your memory for a piece of information. For example:
Who was the first president of the United States?
What is the capital of Argentina?
Where in the body is the basal ganglia located?
As I ask you each of these questions, your brain runs a lightning-quick search of its memory banks for the answers. It's performing this action "from scratch" with just the question as a prompt. This is active recall and it is a much more powerful way to teach your brain to remember information than passive study techniques like reading and highlighting text.
Importantly, active recall is NOT recognition. The reason it's so important to distinguish between the two is because "recognition" gives students a false sense of knowledge and memory.
When you recognize a piece of information, it might feel like you know it ... but you don't; at least not well enough to recall it from scratch and use it to answer an exam question.

Active recall is NOT recognition

The more we practice retrieving information from our memory, the better we get at it. In fact, it's the retrieval practice that actually helps us learn the information.

The cognitive science behind active recall

Three step active recall techniques to learn quicker

1. The SQ3R method

• Survey: survey or skim the material to get an idea of what it is about.
  
• Question: create some questions that you have and that you think the text might answer.
  
• Read: Then actively read the text, trying to answer the questions you created.
  
• Retrieve: This is the active recall part. Recall from memory the information you learned. Use your own words to formulate the material. Do it either orally or in writing.
  
• Review: Once you finish that, repeat back to yourself what the point of the material was, and summarize what you learned.
  

2. The Feynman technique

We here at Brainscape are such proponents of the Feynman technique
the best way to learn something is to teach it.
You don’t actually have to teach other people; all you have to do is explain your subject aloud—to your cat, a potted plant, or an imaginary sixth grader—from scratch, as though the student you're explaining it to knows nothing about the topic (this forces you to explain it in simple terms, even if your subject is complex).

3.  digital flashcards such as:(Brainscape , Anki ...)

On the one side of a flashcard, there is a question, which prompts you to actively recall the answer from memory. Only once you've answered it do you turn the card over to reveal the answer.
active recall with three other cognitive learning principles: spaced-repetition, metacognition, and interleaving practice.