Curb Your Highlighting Enthusiasm: Psychologists Say It May Not Really Help You Learn

As a law student, you probably have a rainbow of highlighters in your arsenal. You might use one color for the facts, and another for the holding of a case, thinking that by using this technique you are helping yourself learn important material for a class or exam. Scientists disagree.

In a recent article, educational psychologists examined various techniques to see which were effective for learning. Turns out that highlighting—the learning technique of choice for countless law students—isn’t that effective for learning, and can even be detrimental in some instances. The authors of the study rated highlighting as having “low utility” and “do[ing] little to boost performance.”

One problem with highlighting is that students tend to overhighlight.  This probably happens when your brain is on autopilot, and you fail to really think about the most important details in a text. After all, a colorfully highlighted case looks impressive, right?

The authors identified another problem with highlighting that could have serious consequences for law learning. Highlighting may be able to help with memory for facts, but it appears to be detrimental for making inferences. Making inferences from a text means making connections between concepts that are scattered throughout a text. Learning law deeply is probably much more about making sophisticated inferences rather than recalling rote facts.

So you might want to reconsider reaching for a highlighter the next time you sit down to study. Instead, you could give other learning techniques that educational psychologists have found to be effective a try. You could try spreading learning out over time (not cramming), interleaving (switching between two subjects like contracts and torts), or self-explanation (explaining concepts to yourself or someone else).

See John Dunlosky et al., Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology 14(1) Psychological Science in the Public Interest 4 (2013). [full text link]