Review Help Tool: Crash Course Psychology

Psychology students should be excited to learn that the friendly folks over at Crash Course have been working on creating videos for psychology topics. This is a great development, since the things that make Crash Course so popular (namely, Hank Green's upbeat and engaging style coupled with fun animations) are now being harnessed to help you learn psychology!

As the AP Psychology Exam approaches, students might find these videos to be a helpful review of topics presented in class. So far, there are 11 videos on major topics in psychology, all of them about 10 minutes long. I've put them together in a playlist below. I've also written up some tips on how to best use them to enhance your study for the AP Psych Exam, should you choose to do that.

How to use these videos to enhance review:

• Use them to prime retrieval of content topics before studying that topic more in depth. So, for example, you might watch the video on The Chemical Mind before doing some retrieval practice (flashcards, practice questions) on neurons and neurotransmitters.
• Use them to identify topics for a particular unit that are very "dusty." For example, maybe you had forgotten all about structuralism and functionalism. When Hank mentions these terms, and you realize they don't sound familiar, make a note to practice applying them later.
• Use them to help spread out your studying. For example, consider picking one topic to review each night, and incorporate that video into your review.

How NOT to use these videos:

• Do not make them your only strategy for study. There are a number of reasons for this. For one, not all topics in an AP Psych course are yet represented in this playlist (though more are on their way!). Secondly, however, just as research has shown that re-reading (especially re-reading chapter summaries) is an inefficient study strategy, it is unlikely that passively viewing video after video will lead to better retrieval. There are research-proven strategies for study (e.g., distributed practice and practice testing/retrieval practice), so USE THOSE, too!
• Avoid passive viewing. Just pointing your eyeballs at the screen and hitting play WILL NOT help you remember this material for the AP Psych Exam. In fact, that's probably just wasting valuable study time and, even worse, perhaps convincing you that you know more than you really do. The cognitive science is clear on this, the most effective study strategies are the ones that often feel the most difficult, so if this feels too easy, it is.