A good YouTube lecture can teach a topic well. But watching is passive. You can finish a whole video, nod along, and remember little the next day. This guide shows how to watch actively and then test yourself.
Why watching is not the same as learning
A clear video makes ideas feel easy. That ease can fool you. The speaker does the thinking, and you follow. Following an explanation is not the same as giving it yourself.
Research on study methods points the same way. Dunlosky et al. (2013) rated practice testing high and passive methods like rereading low. Watching a video again is a lot like rereading. Pulling ideas back from memory is what builds it. See active recall vs rereading for more.
Before you press play
- Pick one video for one study block. Don't queue five.
- Check that someone speaks in the video. Lectures and explainer videos work well. Music or a silent screen recording gives little to study from.
- Read the title and the chapters, if there are any. Guess what the main points will be.
- Have paper ready. You'll write questions, not a copy of the slides.
Try a short pretest too. Before you watch, answer a few questions on the topic, even if you get them wrong. Richland, Kornell and Kao (2009) found that trying to answer questions before studying helped people learn the material. This held even when their first guesses were wrong.
While you watch: pause and recall
The main habit is simple. Watch a section, then pause. Without looking back, write the main point in your own words. Then keep going.
- Watch one section, which is one idea or a few minutes.
- Pause the video.
- Write the main point from memory, in one or two sentences.
- Write one question an exam might ask about it.
- Rewind only if you can't recall anything at all.
This is slower than watching straight through. That's fine. You'll finish with notes made from your own recall and a list of questions to test yourself with.
After the video: test yourself
Wait a while after the video ends. Then answer the questions you wrote, without the video or your notes. Mark the ones you got wrong or weren't sure about.
You can also make a full practice test from the video. In Quizfix, you paste a YouTube link and it builds questions from what the speaker says. That's why the video needs speech: the questions come from the spoken words. You get multiple choice, true or false, and fill in the blank questions, and each answer says why.
The YouTube to quiz tool works without an account, 3 runs a day per device. If the speaker was unclear at some point, a question can come out wrong. Check any odd question against the video.
Fix what you missed
Every miss points to a part of the video you need again. Find that part. Rewatch only that part, not the whole video. You already know most of it, so a full rewatch wastes time.
Then make a flashcard for each miss. In Quizfix, the Fix round turns your misses into flashcards and drills them. There is more on this step in what to do after a practice test.
Make it stick over days
Retest the next day, and again a few days later. Spreading reviews out helps memory last. Cepeda et al. (2006) reviewed many studies on this spacing effect.
If your exam has a date, review a little every day instead of all at once. See spaced repetition before an exam for a simple plan. In Quizfix, you can set the exam date and do one short Today's session each day.
When a video is not the best source
- Long videos with many topics. Study one chapter at a time.
- Videos where key steps are written on a board but never said out loud. The spoken words may miss them, so copy those by hand.
- Videos that disagree with your course. Your teacher's version is what the exam marks.
- A video as your only source. If the course has slides or readings too, test from those as well.