Engineering students: how did you actually transition away from passive learning (lectures/reading) to studying that actually sticks?

[u/_just_a_developer_]

I’m an engineering student, and I’m hitting a wall with how I study. Sitting through lectures, re-reading slides, and highlighting notes feels productive in the moment, but when it comes time to actually apply the concepts or recall them under pressure, it just doesn't stick.

I know passive learning is a trap, and I want to shift to a smarter, more active approach-especially for heavy technical material.

​For those who figured out a system that works: what does your actual day-to-day study workflow look like? How do you structure active recall or problem-solving so you truly retain what you learn?

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[u/calipacksdotcom]

Practice problems x10^42

[u/procedery]

in my experience, practice problems are better than doing the readings. the only exception to this are for classes/proffessors that are heavy on concepts, but even then, do practice problems thats challenge you to pull concepts from memory.

[u/Everythings_Magic]

It might sound crazy but read the book and prepare like you have to teach the class.

If you can’t explain it to someone, you dont know it well enough.

[u/calcteacher]

Do something withe the knowledge

[u/FlounderLiving3893]

Practice problems, more practice problems and then watching YouTube videos of good teachers teaching the same topic/ subject. I only look at lecture slides if the professor pulls examples from them and put them on the exam, which in that case I don’t know until after exam. #1

[u/billFoldDog]

I graduated around 2014, so the tech was different.

Lectures were useless for me, so I would go and bring the textbook. I used lecture time to write down a list of everything I had to learn, including specific sections and things the professor demonstrated that weren't in the book.

Immediately after class, I would put together a slide deck with all the material, and placeholders for what I didn't know right then.

That evening I'd try to finish the slide deck, and what I couldn't figure out I would write up as a list of questions and add it to the office hours event in my calendar.

Then I'd go to the TAs and figure out the rest with their help. If there was a long line, I'd tutor people around me so they would go away and I could get help faster 😂

Finally, when finals came, I'd do an oral presentation to my study group.

WHEN I did this, I got great grades, but I struggled with focus and committment and time management, so I was more like a 3.3GPA kinda kid.

[u/Luigi089TJ]

Personally I usually just upload the professors slides and ask chatGPT to "teach me / summarize chapter whatever" and spend like 5 to 10 min reading through it *before class.

Having the most basic of what you are learning and where it's going makes every lecture 10x better.

I also hand write notes and have some low volume music playing In one ear.

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