Why You Should Skip Class: Active Learning

We tend to retain more information when we exert more mental effort. [1]

When we are in class and listening to the lecturer speak, we are trying to follow his thought processes and his pace. But when we sit down with a textbook and try to study for an exam, we try to understand the concept at our own pace. You'll notice that when you study by yourself, you slow down, speed up, pause, skim, and sometimes repeat different parts of the text. That's because not everything in a book or a paragraph will have the exact same importance to you. And if that doesn't describe you when you study, then you probably notice that you often read entire paragraphs without knowing what you just read.

This jumping around the text is that extra step your brain is taking to isolate the parts you don't know so well and really commit the material to memory. Think about all those times you've skipped many weeks of classes but in the end you cram like crazy and still end up with a decent score. That intense day or two before the exam is when you perform your most active learning. So think about that the next time you're dozing off in class.

[1] C. Diemand-Yauman (2011). "Fortune favors the bold (and the Italicized): effects of disfluency on educational outcomes". Cognition.