Category: Study Skills

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Game. Mental Set. Match.

By Randee Blickenstaff

From the moment you walk through the doors of high school, people are preaching to you about the impending storm that is college.  Teachers preach to you for four long years about how everything that is taught within the walls of your sacred high school is to prepare you for the years of university life ahead.  Well, maybe I missed the part where football games and homecoming are any sort of foreshadowing to college, but for the most part high school faculty hits the nail on the head.  However, they seem to be missing one huge detail.  COLLEGE IS A WHOLE NEW WORLD.

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Get a New Perspective

By Cory Lauer

            Have you ever wondered what the best study methods are? This conundrum plagues many incoming and first year college students. But, something to be taken into consideration is how the information is presented on the page. Repetition is helpful in remembering material but presenting the material with other similar material and restructuring it into something easier to digest is paramount to better learn and remember the information. This is one of the goals of Gestalt psychology. Similar ideas and theories will be better associated when they are presented together, and each idea or theory will be better remembered if it is framed in a different manner. Because of this, utilizing Gestalt representation and restructuring will promote better study habits and increase the amount of information remembered. Continue reading “Get a New Perspective”

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Where and How to Study for Better Recall

By Ashley Guingrich

Everyone studies differently! Are you one of those people who studies, with your homework and notes sprawled out everywhere, while the TV is on? Maybe you enjoy going to the library and hiding behind the bookshelves. Perhaps you enjoy noisy banging and clanging of pans, while your dog barks every 10 seconds. Possibly, you’re none of these people, and MUST STUDY OUTSIDE no matter what, with your laptop. Whatever the case may be, take a moment and think about how you study.

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Interleaving: Helping To Link You To Success

By Beth Mickna

Entering college is going to be one of the greatest times of your life, but it will add a new amount of stress to your life as well. There are going to be many new opportunities for you throughout the time you spend here. Every class you take is going to be instructed differently. You will have to learn to study different ways in order to be successful in your college academic career. Some professors use powerpoints that you can copy the notes down from, and others will lecture the entire time.  With those professors, you will have to be able to listen carefully while writing the information you think is important. I cannot tell you the ways that will work best for you in the classes that you are going to take, but I can give you a few tips on how to study. Using the method I am telling you about can help you to be ready for whatever information is thrown at you.

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Spacing Effect and Consolidation in Studying: Don’t you worry, you have time for that nap!

By Liz Wagner

Reality of College
College can be a scary experience for every incoming freshman, your automatically scared of the action of “failing”. College isn’t supposed to be a scary experience, it is supposed to be an enjoyable experience. You will have many opportunities that will shape you in to the grown individual you will become, you will attend parties, join clubs, and experience many firsts. But one important factor that you need to pay attention to is your study habits. If your study habits are not up to par, your grades and college experience will not end well.

Now we all know that one weakness that many college students face at some point in their college experience, and that is procrastination. Procrastination is somewhat like an evil monster that creeps up on students, especially when it comes to big papers and exams. The results of procrastinating are cramming last minute for that exam, meaning no time for that Netflix show or that nap you were counting on. What if I told you, that there are studies showing that a college student could benefit from not cramming, and you would have time for that nap.

This phenomenon in psychology is called the spacing effect, and it can benefit many college students in their studies. Many students throughout the years, typically develop their own study habits. But as you continue to read, you may discover that the spacing effect is the answer to those prays or to help you get that passing grade. The spacing effect is a pretty simple concept in psychology, the concept is spacing out your study time into multiple periods instead of one mass study session (4). During these multiple study sessions, an individual should take breaks in between each session, and the mind should be devoted to the same subject to acquire the best results (4). So that is right, multi-tasking in this phenomenon wouldn’t be a good idea. But the good news is during those short breaks in between studying you can do all the social media browsing, napping, or Netflix watching you want.
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Test Better Using the Testing Effect

By Sydney Abdnour

We’ve all heard the saying “you get out what you put in.” This statement applies perfectly to schooling, specifically studying and test taking. In high school, it is easy to cram the night before a test and get a good grade. Unfortunately, that is not the case in college. Even if you consider yourself a “good test taker,” it is important to put more time into your studies than you did in high school. There are many techniques out there to enhance the learning and studying experience for students of all ages. One of the effective ways to help students (especially college students) study and retain information better is the Testing Effect, known more commonly as the Retrieval Practice Effect.

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Stop Wasting Time Re-reading

By Emily Ellison

Welcome! Since you are reading this, I am going to assume you are a freshman in college looking to impress your teachers with your study skills for acing exams. So I have a question for you. In college, what do you believe is the most valuable thing to a student? The answer to this is time. Time is something that once it passes you cannot get it back and in college time management is a skill you will learn very quickly. College professors expect you to spend 2 hours outside of class studying for every 1 credit hour you are in class. Insane right? That was my first thought too when I got told that much time was expected of me.

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Only three steps and you’re master of elaboration!

By Hikaru Sanouchi

Elaboration: The process of developing or presenting a theory, policy, or system in further detail. (from dictionary.com)

The word elaboration is from the late Latin word, elaborationem. Labor played an important role in the word elaboration, as we can physically see the word “labor” in this word. When we imagine the word labor, we would imagine labor work, which is physically hard work people do, for instance yard work, construction, and such. Currently, elaboration means to work out a problem in more detail and depth.

That is it for elaborating on the word elaboration. Here, I’m going talk about using elaboration in psychology.  Elaboration is the process of incorporating new information with an old idea. According to Yang (1995), a goal of elaboration is to, “make learning more meaningful by forming a relationship between the new, unfamiliar material and the new the older, already learned information” (Yang. 1995. P,3). Creating a connection between your new knowledge and old knowledge to understand the information in more depth is the goal (1).

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Cuing You in on How to Study Effectively

Picture this: you’re a first year college student, fresh out of high school. All throughout high school you got by, by barely studying and maybe just glancing over your notes before an exam. You always got a decently good grade all thanks to your minimal effort. Your teachers warned you college would be significantly harder but hey, what do they know, right? You get to college and take your first quiz or exam, following the same study habits from high school and what do you know, your grade did not come back very pretty.

No college student is immune to the stress and panic of studying for quizzes and exams, and your old high school study techniques are definitely not going to cut it in this new higher level learning environment. Just skimming your notes and praying something will stick will get you nowhere and ultimately just help you do poorly instead of helping you get the grades you need. What you need is a whole new way of studying, suited for your new college self, to help you succeed academically and make college a whole lot better in general.

By: Deann Wolzen

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