9 min read

Unlocking the full potential of your study sessions can be a game-changer, and I’m here to reveal a technique that few have tapped into using Notion for active recall.

Imagine achieving higher grades with less time and effort than ever before. It’s not just a dream — it’s within your reach.

Active recall isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a proven, evidence-based strategy that can revolutionize the way you learn.

In a 2009 journal article, Karpicke et al. described how they found that a majority of students repeatedly read their notes or textbook but relatively few use self-testing or retrieval practice (the core of active recall).

While many students stick to passive techniques like rereading and highlighting, the real magic happens when you engage your brain in retrieving information.

But here’s the kicker: so few people are aware of this powerful method. Imagine the advantage you’ll have once you master it.

So, what exactly is active recall, and why should you use it? Cue large purple title!

What is Active Recall, and Why Use It?

It’s simple: instead of passively consuming information, you actively retrieve it from memory. And the evidence supporting its effectiveness is overwhelming.

In a review article comparing multiple learning techniques, Dunlosky et. al (2013) compared multiple study techniques and concluded

1) High value techniques: practice testing and distributed practice (AKA the things top students do)

2) Low value techniques: summarization, highlighting, the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning and rereading (AKA they things most people do)

Studies have shown that techniques like practice testing and distributed practice reign supreme, while passive methods like highlighting and summarization fall short. In fact, repeated testing has been found to be critical for long-term retention, while repeated studying yields no significant benefits.

Now, onto the exciting part — how to implement active recall using Notion.

Tools to Implement Active Recall

Simplistically, active recall is about trying to answer questions.

You can generate those questions, or they can come from somewhere else — practice exams, previous years’ exams or peers where you swap made-up potential questions.

To be able to “ask yourself” these questions, you can use something like a series of flashcards with the question on one side and the answer on the other, an online version of that like Anki (we’ll be talking about an awesome tool called Anki in a future newsletter) or my preferred tool for this, Notion.

I can hear you thinking, “Yeah, Ashley, I get it; you like Notion.”

And you’d be right. Notion is a fantastic tool that I use in a multitude of ways.

It is, however, almost a perfect tool for active recall.

Why? Well, I’m glad you asked!

How to Set Up Your Active Recall Questions in Notion?

Very soon, I’ll have videos up on my YouTube channel about the basics of how to use Notion so if that’s holding you back I’ve got you covered.

For the purposes of active recall though, there’s very little Notion knowledge needed. I’ll explain everything you need to know.

I’m going to build a few questions from scratch to show you how it’s done. I’ll be using the online Drake and Fabozzi textbook linked HERE and starting on page 13 of the text (page 29 of the pdf).

Using passive study techniques we might read, highlight or try and summarize the material here.

Most people then go into the exam with what’s called the “illusion of competence” because each time they read the material, it looks familiar, which makes them feel like they have a handle on it.

Does this sound familiar? You may have found this yourself and if not, I’m pretty sure you know people who felt they were prepared but didn’t perform as well on the exam as they expected.

It turns out familiarity with the material was not good enough when faced with detailed, tricky exam questions and was no substitute for detailed knowledge that was retreiveable.

Instead, I’m going to take that material in the Drake and Fabozzi text I mentioned above and make questions out of it.

I copied the relevant section here so you wouldn’t have to tab back and forth from here to the webpage. Don’t worry about reading it — it’s here if you want to refer back to where I am creating the questions and answers from.

“A country’s financial system consists of entities that help facilitate the flow of funds from those that have funds to invest to those who need funds to invest. Consider if you had to finance a purchase of a home by rounding up enough folks willing to lend to you. This would be challenging — and a bit awkward. In addition, this would require careful planning — and lots of paperwork — to keep track of the loan contracts, and how much you must repay and to whom. And what about the folks you borrow from? How are they going to evaluate whether they should lend to you and what interest rate they should charge you for the use of their funds?
In lending and investing situations, there is not only the awkwardness of dealing directly with the other party or parties, but there is the problem that one party has a different information set than the other. In other words, there is information asymmetry.
A financial system makes possible a more efficient transfer of funds by mitigating the information asymmetry problem between those with funds to invest and those needing funds. In addition to the lenders and the borrowers, the financial system has three components: (1) financial markets, where transactions take place; (2) financial intermediaries, who facilitate he transactions; and (3) regulators of financial activities, who try to make sure that everyone is playing fair. In this chapter, we look at each of these components and the motivation for their existence. Before we discuss the participants, we need to first discuss financial assets, which represent the borrowings or investments.”

What makes Notion really useful here is that you can use the toggle function to do two things

Hide the answers so you can try to answer them yourself first
Have sub-questions embedded in the main question and create multiple “levels” of information

So in Notion, I want to use the toggle tool so I can hide and unhide the answer. Start the line with “>” followed by a space and it will understand you want the toggle function.

Once you hit the space bar, it will reformat to the toggle function and you can start typing your question.

In this case, the first question would be, “What does a country’s financial system consist of?”

Once you type this, hit Enter and that will bring your cursor into the part of the toggle that gets opened and closed — the place where you put the answer.

The answer you’d type in this case comes from the first paragraph — “entities that help facilitate…”. You get the idea.

You might not know where to go from here because if you hit enter, you’re still in the “toggle” of that question.

Simply hit enter to get to the next line, followed by backspace, and it’ll move out of the “toggle” and become a normal new line where you can do the next question.

The second question might be, “What’s an example of this?” Again, start the line with “>” followed by the space bar. Once you type the question, hit Enter, and it’ll take you to the hide/unhide part of the toggle.

Hopefully, you’re getting the idea. Sorry this part is a little dense and not such an easy read but we’re at the end of the technical part.

Continue on and put in questions from the chapter — I just did the rest of the paragraph for illustrative purposes.

Notice in the last question that there were sub-questions with more detail as well.

In these cases, I made each answer in the list a toggle, and the “answer” in the hidden part contained relevant information about it.

How to Use Notion Once the Questions Are Set Up

As it turns out, you’ve already done a heap of studying.

Just creating the questions forced you to engage with the material more meaningfully. The next step is to use active recall to build longer-term retention.

First, click the toggles to hide the answers.

Then, later that day or the next day, open Notion and ask yourself these questions. And, yes there is an iOS app for Notion!

Once you answer (out loud if you can or at least spoken under your breath if you’re in the library — NOT only in your head if at all possible), open the toggle to see if you got it right. If yes put a check and if not, put an x. (Windows key + “.“ will open the emoji window where you can find checkmarks and x’s )

Once you’ve gone through all the questions and marked right or wrong, you’re done studying this for the day.

The next day, open Notion and go through this again, but only with the questions you got wrong yesterday.

Repeat this each day until you correctly answer all the questions you got wrong the previous day. At this point, you are done your first pass studying. You’ve learned the material and have demonstrated you can recall it. Great job.

One minor tweak people sometimes make is that you need to get two checkmarks in a row before you’re done with a question so that the information is embedded in your head a little bit deeper.

Remember, you’ve just completed this for one chapter or one section. You want to do this for all the material you’re responsible for.

It might seem like a lot, but once you start doing it, you’ll be surprised by

1) How quickly you can get through it and

2) How much the creation of the questions and answers helps set up the foundation and speeds up review

I’m not exaggerating when I say this is a game-changer.

That’s it. Hopefully, I’ve explained this clearly. It’s not easy to convey in writing. To help with that, I also made a video that runs through a similar example.