Cramming

The argument

Cramming has a poor reputation, but the claim made for it here is narrow and specific: it is a legitimate way to review learned material just before a big test. The emphasis falls on review. Cramming is not being proposed as a substitute for having studied, but as the last stage of a process that has already happened. Seen that way, its usefulness is easier to assess. By the time a major test approaches, a student has accumulated a body of material: notes taken over a term, completed assignments with the corrections already marked on them, and supplemental materials handed out along the way. Between them these have all of the information needed to help them pass the test, since the course was designed so that they would. The problem at that point is not acquisition but recall. Material learned in week two has had ten weeks to fade. Concentrated review just before the test addresses exactly that problem. Going back over notes refreshes what has already been encoded rather than building it from nothing, which is why it can cover a term's worth of content in a session when learning that content the first time took months. It also happens close enough to the examination that very little decay occurs between the review and the moment the material is needed. There is a further practical point. A student's remaining time before a test is finite and the syllabus is not. A final pass over everything, however rapid, surfaces the gaps that targeted study can then address, and it does so while there is still time to act on what it finds. For these reasons proponents regard cramming as a legitimate short-term study skill.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Students don't retain the information gleaned from cramming just before a test. As soon as the test is over, all of that crammed information is immediately brain-dumped, and is of no use for future applications which require said knowledge.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Cramming only prepares students for the short term, not the long term.