Spaced repetition and active recall improves academic performance among pharmacy students

Abstract

Pharmacy students rely heavily on traditional learning methods like passive review of learned material and rote memorization that eventually leads to rapid forgetting and poor long-term retention. This is a serious problem in pharmacy field because students must retain a plethora of information like drug names, adverse effects, drug interactions, indications, and contraindications etc. Passive review of the study material by simply re-reading lecture notes or highlighting textbooks, creates a false sense of familiarity rather than true understanding. In recent times, learning techniques like spaced repetition and active recall have been widely reported in the literature to improve learning outcome among the students from various fields. By applying these evidence-based strategies, pharmacy educators and students can address the shortcomings of conventional learning and develop more efficient and durable learning habits.