The Prince, The Can­ter­bury Tales, The Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, The Souls of Black Folk, The Ele­ments of Style: we’ve read all these, of course. Or at least we’ve read most of them (one or two for sure), if our ever-dim­mer mem­o­ries of high school or col­lege are to be trust­ed. But we can rest assured that stu­dents are read­ing — or in any case, being assigned — these very same works today, thanks to the Open Syl­labus project, which as of this writ­ing has assem­bled a data­base of 7,292,573 dif­fer­ent col­lege course syl­labi. Great­ly expand­ed since we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture, its “Galaxy” now visu­al­izes the 1,138,841 most fre­quent­ly assigned texts in that data­base, pre­sent­ing them in a Google Maps-like inter­face for your intel­lec­tu­al explo­ration.

If you click on the search win­dow in the upper-left cor­ner of that inter­face, a scrol­lable rank­ing of the top 100 most fre­quent­ly assigned texts opens imme­di­ate­ly below. Num­ber one, appear­ing on more than 15,000 of the syl­labi col­lect­ed so far, is Strunk and White’s clas­sic writ­ing-style guide.

Click on its title and you’ll find your­self in its cor­ner of the map, and you’ll see high­light­ed oth­er pop­u­lar read­ings that tend to be assigned togeth­er with it: Diana Hack­er’s A Writer’s Ref­er­ence (at the moment the sec­ond-most assigned text), Aris­totle’s Rhetoric, Mar­tin Luther King Jr.‘s “Let­ter from the Birm­ing­ham Jail,” Jür­gen Haber­mas’ The Struc­tur­al Trans­for­ma­tion of the Pub­lic Sphere.

Michel Fou­cault holds by some mea­sures the record for the great­est num­ber of cita­tions in the human­i­ties. If you’ve read only one of his books, you’ve prob­a­bly read Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish, his 1975 study of the penal sys­tem — and cur­rent hold­er of six­teenth place on the Open Syl­labus rank­ings. But zoom in on it and you’ll find plen­ty of rel­e­vant books and arti­cles you might not have read: Alan Elsner’s Gates of Injus­tice, William Ian Miller’s The Anato­my of Dis­gust, Soledad Broth­er: The Prison Let­ters of George Jack­son. Sim­i­lar­ly, an excur­sion in the neigh­bor­hood of Bene­dict Ander­son’s Imag­ined Com­mu­ni­ties brings encoun­ters with oth­er inves­ti­ga­tions of coun­try and cit­i­zen­ship like Ernest Renan’s What Is a Nation? and Dun­can S.A. Bel­l’s Myth­scapes: Mem­o­ry, Mythol­o­gy, and Nation­al Iden­ti­ty.

In every sense, the results to be found in the Open Syl­labus Galaxy are more inter­est­ing than those offered up by the stan­dard you-may-also-like algo­rithms. Back in col­lege you may have enjoyed, say, Edward Said’s Ori­en­tal­ism, but the range of texts that could accom­pa­ny it would have been lim­it­ed by the theme of the class and the intent of your instruc­tor. Here you’ll find Noam Chom­sky’s Failed States on one side, John R. Bowen’s Why the French Don’t Like Head­scarves on anoth­er, Hans Wehr’s Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Writ­ten Ara­bic on anoth­er, and even Mes­sages to the World: The State­ments of Osama bin Laden on anoth­er still. If we want to under­stand a sub­ject, after all, we must read not just about it but around it. In col­lege or else­where, you might well have heard that idea; here, you can see it. Enter the Open Syl­labus Galaxy here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Lyn­da Barry’s Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her UW-Madi­son Class, “The Unthink­able Mind”

Don­ald Barthelme’s Syl­labus High­lights 81 Books Essen­tial for a Lit­er­ary Edu­ca­tion

Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

“Call­ing Bull­shit”: See the Syl­labus for a Col­lege Course Designed to Iden­ti­fy & Com­bat Bull­shit

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

If you’ve left for­mal edu­ca­tion, you no doubt retain a few good mem­o­ries from your years as a stu­dent. None of them, safe to say, involve study­ing — assum­ing you man­aged to get any study­ing done in the first place. The unfor­tu­nate fact is that few of us ever real­ly come to grips with what it means to study, apart from sit­ting by one­self with a text­book for hours on end. Despite its obvi­ous inef­fi­cien­cy as a learn­ing method, we’ve all found our­selves doing that kind of “study­ing” at one time or anoth­er. Hav­ing taught psy­chol­o­gy class­es for 40 years, Pierce Col­lege pro­fes­sor Mar­ty Lob­dell has seen thou­sands of stu­dents labor­ing, indeed suf­fer­ing, under sim­i­lar study­ing-relat­ed assump­tions, and in his 8.7‑million-times-viewed talk “Study Less, Study Smart,” he sets out to cor­rect them. He has also dis­pensed his wis­dom in a book by the same title.

Not many of us can get much out of a text­book after a few hours with it, or indeed, after more than about thir­ty min­utes. It’s thus at such an inter­val that Lob­dell sug­gests tak­ing a reg­u­lar five-minute break to lis­ten to music, play a game, talk to a friend, med­i­tate — to do any­thing but study — in order to recharge your abil­i­ty to focus and head off these dimin­ish­ing returns of absorp­tion. At the end of each entire study ses­sion, you’d do well to sched­ule a big­ger reward in order to rein­force the behav­ior of engag­ing in study ses­sions in the first place. Ide­al­ly, you’ll enjoy this reward in a dif­fer­ent place than you do your study­ing, which itself should­n’t be a room that comes with its own dis­tract­ing pri­ma­ry use, like the bed­room, kitchen, or liv­ing room.

Even if you have a ded­i­cat­ed study area (and bet­ter yet, a ded­i­cat­ed study lamp that you turn on only while hit­ting the books), you won’t get much accom­plished there if you rely on sim­ply read­ing texts over and over again in hopes of even­tu­al­ly mem­o­riz­ing their con­tents. Lob­dell rec­om­mends focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on not facts but the broad­er con­cepts that orga­nize those facts. An effec­tive means of check­ing whether you under­stand a con­cept is to try explain­ing it in your own words: Richard Feyn­man premised his “note­book tech­nique” for learn­ing, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, on just such a process. You’ll also want to make use of the notes you take in class, but only if you take them in a use­ful way, which neces­si­tates a process of expan­sion and revi­sion imme­di­ate­ly after each class.

Lob­dell has much more advice to offer through­out the full, hour­long talk. In it he also cov­ers the val­ue of study groups; the more ques­tion­able val­ue of high­light­ing; gen­uine remem­ber­ing ver­sus sim­ple recog­ni­tion; the neces­si­ty of a good night’s sleep; the “sur­vey, ques­tion, read, recite, review” approach to text­books; and the use­ful­ness of mnemon­ics (even, or per­haps espe­cial­ly, sil­ly ones). If you’re a stu­dent, you can make use of Lob­del­l’s tech­niques right away, and if you once were a stu­dent, you may find your­self wish­ing you’d known about them back then. But prop­er­ly adapt­ed, they can ben­e­fit the intel­lec­tu­al work you do at any stage of life. Nev­er, after all, does con­cen­tra­tion become less valu­able, and nev­er can we claim to have learned some­thing unless we can first make it under­stood to oth­ers – or indeed, to our­selves.

If you want the cliff notes ver­sion of the Study Less, Study Smart lec­ture, watch the video below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Craft of Writ­ing Effec­tive­ly: Essen­tial Lessons from the Long­time Direc­tor of UChicago’s Writ­ing Pro­gram

How to Speak: Watch the Lec­ture on Effec­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tion That Became an MIT Tra­di­tion for Over 40 Years

The Cor­nell Note-Tak­ing Sys­tem: Learn the Method Stu­dents Have Used to Enhance Their Learn­ing Since the 1940s

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

Wyn­ton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Prac­tice: For Musi­cians, Ath­letes, or Any­one Who Wants to Learn Some­thing New

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.