Study skills research

Students are least likely to choose to test themselves while studying, although it has been shown to be the most effective study strategy. 120 college students were asked to read science texts and use one of four study strategies to prepare for a test in a week: reading the text once, reading it repeatedly, drawing a map of the relationships between concepts, or actively trying to remember the information via quizzes. The more times students read the material, the more they thought they'd remember in the long term, estimating they would get 80 percent or more correct answers on a test given a week later. "This finding happens all the time in research, and I think it's because when you repeatedly read material, it becomes very familiar," thus making students feel more confident that they will remember it, Mr. Karpicke said. "In the long term, it's the exact opposite."Students had the least confidence in retrieval practice, or quizzing, which actually proved to be the most successful study practice."

Karpicke, J.< & Smith, M.(2012). Separate mnemonic effects of retrieval practice and elaborative encoding. Journal of Memory and Language.
http://learninglab.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/inpress_Karpicke_Smith_JML.pdf