Effective Study Strategies Review

Remember not that long ago when you first found out you had been accepted into college? How did you feel? You walked into those doors on the first day not knowing what to expect and then classes started and you were faced with an overwhelming amount of work. College is here to get you to point B, self-sustainability. Most jobs expect a minimum of a 35-hour weekly commitment, some jobs require 50 or more a week. A full-time student is expected to work the same amount of time on their academics. This study guide is here to teach you effective ways to learn in college so you are prepared for a career in the real world. Bosses, like Professors, have expectations and you need to be at your best when you are performing. College is the best place to teach you those skills. You need so much more than just memorizing and regurgitating the information back on to a test. You will see how effective organization, time management, self-care, study habits, knowledge retention, and knowledge retrieval, Keep an open mind as you go through the tools laid out in this guide. Every person and brain are different, finding what works for you will help you be successful not only in your career as a student but in your future profession as well.

Prior to opening a book, there are tools you must acquire to be successful. You will need pens, pencils, notebooks, and folders to start. Your first task before classes begin is to prepare your workspace. Set up your environment to suit your individual needs. Keep your supplies in there place and put them back when you are done. Color code your folders and notebooks by class, it makes it easier to find them both and easier to keep them together. Get a small hanging file folder box for storing important papers, dividing assignments, filing, and bills. Another tool that you can get that is cheap is stackable file trays. It is important that you keep classes separated to reduce your stress and time when you are looking for something. Don’t buy things to organize your workspace and not use them. Being organized is one key to effective time management and stress reduction. Being unorganized is self-defeating behavior.

Effective organization skills are just one of many keys to effective time management. Another way we have learned to reduce time is to create a routine. Start by sitting down and putting together a study schedule and stick to it. Make sure you are prioritizing course work appropriately and schedule it accordingly. If you decided to put your schedule down on paper or in your phone, make sure it is flexible enough to make changes in case a task takes more time than you expected. Schedule personal time outside of this schedule or incorporate it into the schedule if that is easier for you. If an assignment took longer than you scheduled it to take, you might need to cancel the nightlife to reprioritize your schedule. Take time with it so you make it as realistic as possible. Make sure that meals, physical activity, and sleep are scheduled in too if that will ensure that you are taking care of your body and your brain. Cramming information doesn’t work. Putting yourself in a situation where you need to cram is self-defeating behavior.

In each class, you will be given a syllabus. Familiarizing yourself with the course using this tool is imperative. The syllabus allows you to get a sneak peek at what is expected of you throughout the semester. It gives you the contact information for the Professor and their expectations of you. It also gives you due dates for assignments and papers, which can further aid you in creating a solid schedule for effective time management. It is your first exposure to the material that will be covered. If you need help understanding it or have questions please ask your Professor or another classmate. It also allows you to independently work ahead because life is messy and things happen. Being proactive will help reduce stress as well as ensure expected timelines are met.

Let’s take a closer look at how to maintain optimal health for learning. Look back at the study environment that you organized. How does this space make you feel? It should make you feel calm and comfortable. If your sensory needs are met, a scented candle, lighting, room temperature, noise level, you will reduce the amount of attention that is directed to your senses and move that energy to study. Eating well is also key. Your brain uses up to 20% of your body’s energy (Google: How much of your energy does your brain use when studying, 01/30/2019), it is extremely important that you keep yourself fueled up by eating healthy, and often if need be. Being physically active is also important. Exercise contributes to strengthening your brain synapses as well as new neuron development, and the protection of existing neurons (Google: How does exercise help cognition? 01/30/2019). Sleep is also key; both quality and quantity count. Most people don’t know how much sleep they need to perform at their best. This usually has a range from 6 to 10 hours a night. Napping can help as well, just don’t use it as an excuse to procrastinate. Self-care is a need not a want.

Knowing your brains needs for optimal learning, and you knowing how much control you have; let’s take a look at how to maximize your knowledge of the material. Your brain has 3 parts to its memory; sensory, working and long-term. Working memory (short term memory) only holds information for about 20 seconds (Bruce Goldstein Cognitive Psychology 2015 pg. 127). Knowledge must go from working memory, be encoded into long-term memory and be retrieved back into working memory from long-term memory (Bruce Goldstein Cognitive Psychology 2015 pg. 180). It takes exposing yourself to the material multiple times over a few days for effective encoding.

There are so many resources at your disposal to maximize your retention of the material. Remember, you need to learn and understand the material. If you know it, taking a test and an exam can be minimally stressful and can result in better grades. It is important that you pay attention in class, not everything you are expected to know is in the book. You can watch lectures on youtube that professors around the country have recorded and posted. Every person teaches just a bit differently and you may watch a 25-minute lecture and it helps further your understanding of the material. The different style of presentation can make it easier to build on previous knowledge or tie it your life.

Another way you can encode the material is exposing yourself to the key terms in the chapter before reading the text. There are programs out there like www.quizlet.com that you can input your key terms into and quiz yourself on them, further encoding information prior to reading. The summary at the end of the chapter will also give you quick exposure to the material. This gives you a basic understanding of what you are about to read. Also, going into the book and read the section “Test Yourself” questions before reading each section of the chapter. Even though you exposed yourself to a condensed form of the information, you still have to read the assigned material. There are necessary details that are in the assigned reading that will help you further your understanding and make retrieving the knowledge easier at test time.

Building on previous knowledge is a great tool. If you look at each section, apply it to previous knowledge of that topic. Look for information in the chapter that you already know and pay attention to how that information builds on the knowledge you currently have. Apply new material to your life or sit and ponder the new information to get a better understanding of what you have just been exposed to. Did you know that studying in cooler temperatures can help you retain information? Your emotions can also aid you in retrieval on a test. You are more likely to remember something if you tie emotion to it. Having a basic knowledge of the chapter will help you form your questions as well. These tools will help you recall the information.

Now the test/exam time is here. Following suggestions in this study guide, you should have exposed yourself to the material at least four times. Make sure the night before you refresh your memory, go over notes you took, reread the chapter summaries necessary for the test, review the key terms (this is where programs like quizlet.com come in handy because it is a huge time saver) and review the section questions. Next, get a good night sleep. When you wake up, eat a full breakfast with good carbs and protein. Your brain will have a hard time retrieving information if you don’t get enough rest or eat a full meal. Do another quick review and remember the tools you used to encode information for retrieval. Stress uses critical energy that you need to use to better focus on the material on the text/exam.

The lecture that was presented by your professor, understanding key terms, reading the summary of the chapters, reading and answering the section questions within the chapter, reading the assigned material, and finding material online or in the library to further your understanding of the material are all great tools to help you with your studies and growing your knowledge. There are tools in here that will not work for you and some that will work well. Stress reduction, time management, self-care, and being organized are vital to your success. How you choose to obtain those skills are ultimately up to you as you are the one who knows you best.