Use 'Think, Pair, Share' for Effective Group Studying

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I really don't recommend studying with other people. In my adult life, I've accumulated an Associates, Bachelors, and Masters, plus a bunch of certificates—in all those years of studying, I was frustrated with group work much more often than I was not. Sessions would devolve into chit-chat and venting sessions or someone would try to avoid pulling their weight by foisting work off on the rest of us. I became the person who would complete the entire project and let everyone put their name on it because I just wanted to avoid all that—but it was probably because I didn't know the right methods to make these sessions productive.

There are actually a few effective methods that will help you study with partners or groups, but you have to know them before you get into that group setting—or else run the risk of no one getting much working done. Try one of my favorite group study methods—“think, pair, share”—the next time you want to study with someone else. I wish I'd known about this one in college, but you still have a chance.

What is “think, pair, share”?

Think, pair, share is a teaching technique typically employed by instructors, but it's easily modifiable for people getting some studying done, too. According to Western Governors University, it was developed by a professor named Frank Lyman in 1981 and is helpful for shy students, as it encourages them to engage in discussion.

The name basically tells you what you need to do:

• First, you think about the subject at hand, studying it until you are pretty sure you grasp it.

• Then, you pair up with someone to discuss it.

• Finally, you share what you read, understand, and don’t understand with the group afterward.

Ideally, by going over the material together, you’ll help each other fill in gaps in your understanding and enhance what you already know.

Use TPS to its maximum

Those are overly simplistic steps, so you need to have a plan for how you'll approach each one. "Think about the subject" is too general. On your own, you should be reading your material critically, using a reading comprehension aid like KWL or SQ3R. Those ask you to write down what you think you know, what you want to know, and what you eventually learn, which forces you to read carefully so you find the answers. When using TPS, they perform a dual function: They give you questions you can ask to the larger group, too.

When it comes time to share, approach it with a plan, too. Volunteer to structure the study session and have everyone go around one at a time to share their favorite insight from the material or idea for the project. Split into pairs and use the Feynman technique, which asks you to teach a concept to another person and relies on the idea that if you can break an idea down well enough to explain it simply, you understand it well.

Why think, pair, share works for studying

If you’re familiar with other group study methods, like the jigsaw method or Feynman, some of the elements of TPS might sound familiar. With jigsaw, each person in the group studies one part of the assigned text, then explains it to everyone else. When using Feynman, you explain the topic you studied as simply as you can to someone else who knows nothing about it. The difference is that with TPS, everyone in the group knows the material before discussing, so you’re not necessarily teaching anyone or being taught, so much as you’re comparing ideas.

When you’re sharing what you know, you make space for someone else to ask follow-up questions, forcing your brain to use active recall to search around for the answer—or sending you back to the source material to look it up. Hearing someone else’s perspective can help you reframe how you think of the topic, causing it to stick in your brain even more.

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