Category: Study Skills

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Don’t Be a Fool, Interleaving is Cool

By Summer Inselmann

Ah yes, high school. The days where you could study for a test the class period before and still feel confident in your work. The time when you had your teacher every day to go over every inch of material. When cramming was the easiest and least time-consuming study habit for you. What was even better you may ask? The fact that it actually seemed to work! All of that multiple choice and matching questions were a breeze. You thought that you would have no problem with college. You have heard a million stories of people saying they cram their studying in the night before a test, but you know what they did not tell you or what you did not read on their twitter? The grade they actually got on that test because believe me, it was not pretty. So here you are starting your college career, you crammed for your first big test, thinking you are already to ace it. Fast forward thirty minutes into class when the exam has been handed out and your face looks like that SpongeBob meme when he is trying to write his essay on what not to do at a stop sign. News flash here is something you did not know, the test is not multiple choice, or maybe the teacher does not word things the same way you do so suddenly all of that quickly memorized information means nothing. It is not stored in your long-term memory, it is barely even in your short-term memory. So good luck!

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Elaborative Rehearsal, But You Already Knew That!

By Kaci Kingman

 Introduction

Are you a new college freshman and are you freaking out because you just cannot seem to remember things like you used to be able to in high school? Well, you are not alone! Most freshman are going to have problems adjusting to how to correctly study the new material in college. You are not going to be able to remember everything you study, even if thats how you rolled in high school. You need to find a balance between a more in depth approach and a more shallow approach(1). You need to figure out if what you are trying to learn needs to be put into your brain for a long time or not. This will help you in determining how you should study the new information. If you need to make information stay in your brain for a long time, boy do I have an answer for you! Have you ever wondered why you can keep repeating the same thing over and over in your head to try and remember it, just to forget it a few minutes later? Yeah, stop doing that! That is not how you are going to succeed in college, but don’t freak out to much, I have your back. I have a way better way for you to memorize things and it’s called elaborative rehearsal!

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To Cram or Not to Cram: Massed Studying vs Distributed Studying

By Ashley Shookman

Does the following image look like a snapshot of you trying to study for a test the night before it is to occur? If your answer was yes, keep reading. I may have the cure for your studying woes.

 First of all, congratulations on getting into university! Much excitement awaits you as you will surely go throw many changes throughout your next four years of life. College can be a fun time to make new friends, learn new things, and go on many new adventures. However, college is not all fun and games. College actually requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and motivation. If you are anything like me, High School didn’t require too much time studying outside of the classroom in order to get decent grades. I am here to tell you, unfortunately, that college is not the same in terms of studying. I learned this the hard way and that is why I am here to teach you the easy way!

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Because who reads

By Paige Shepard

Have you ever taken a class in high school where you were given some kind of material to read, and of course, you didn’t complete it..right? We all know it didn’t matter if you actually read the material because the teacher would go over it the next day in class. Or something like that. Well, don’t get used to that. Soon, you’ll get to college and it is a repeated cycle of going to class, sitting down, watching the power point presentation, listening to the professor speak about it and taking notes about what is being seen, read and heard. Sometimes, get this, the professor doesn’t even USE a power point. You have to take notes on the words that come out of their mouth. Therefore, you have to PAY ACTUAL ATTENTION in class, crazy right? All the while, you’re wondering if any of this is benefiting your ability to remember the new information being taught and crammed into your brain.

We have all experienced classes that we have attended and left the room and felt confident that we have actually learned absolutely nothing at all. If you haven’t yet, you soon will. However, be smart, because when it comes to studying and getting good grades, most students think all it takes is to read over the material last minute and believe they will remember all of that fresh incoming information when it comes to the time that it needs to be recalled. When reading over all the materials for the exam that you’re taking tomorrow in class, you are probably not going to retain any of it unless you engage in active thinking and be creative. According to the generation effect, we should change the way we study for exams or study to remember information.

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Remembering Information Without Making Your Brain Explode

By Kendall Geuvens

Introduction
As a freshman entering college, it is a scary thought to meeting new people, scoping a bigger school, and not to mention, the different and harder information that will be learned. A lot of freshman fears are the studying that goes into class. How much do you study, what do you study, and how do you know that you studied enough? Not every freshman is going to study and be able to remember every bit of information that is in front of them. An important way that you will be able to memorize the information is through understanding how to effectively use short term memory.

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Improve Your Study Habits! Get Better Grades!

By Anya Bovilsky

Are you in need of reevaluating your study habits and ready to get better test scores? When I was in high school, I was constantly looking for new ways to study. I used cramming and waiting until the last minute, only focusing on one thing at a time, with and without music or background noise. For me, especially for definitions like in Spanish class or Anatomy, using flashcards and reviewing them over and over again was the best way for me to remember the material for the test and to help remember more for the final at the end of the semester. I had a teacher in my senior level Anatomy class that was convinced repetition every day would help us learn the material, so when we were learning all of the bones in the body, we would go over a different section every single day to help the information encoded into our brains better. I brought that with me to college and it has helped me maintain good grades. Continue reading “Improve Your Study Habits! Get Better Grades!”

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The Trick to Studying: Categories!

By Azure’Rea Hike

When I was a kid I used to play a pool game called ‘Categories’. The game went a little something like this:
-One person is ‘it’. This person has to pick a broad category. A category is defined as “groups of objects that belong to the same class of objects” (Goldstein). These classes are created by similarities of characteristics. Some examples could be favorite food, nickelodeon shows, Characters from a specific T.V. show, etc. The goal is to make the broad category as narrow as possible.

-The other players have to pick something that falls under the category. For example, if the category is favorite food someone might say pizza.
-The player that is ‘it’ has to turn his or her back to the other players and stand in the center of a pool wall. They have to guess which item in the category that the other players pick.
-If the player that is ‘it’ calls your item, you have to swim across the diameter of the pool and hope not to get tagged.

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Do Yourself a Favor and Sleep–Your GPA Will Thank You

By David Cale

Introduction
Welcome to college! From making new friends, binge watching Netflix, and late-night Taco Bell runs, college is possibly the best way to make memories that will last forever. Since classes are during the day, most people reserve their evenings for these memory making occasions.
While a few late nights every now and then may not have any significant impacts on your day-to-day lifestyle, making a habit of staying up late can be incredibly detrimental to your ability to think, react, work, learn, and get along with others (1).
Not only does a poor sleep schedule make you susceptible to chronic health problems, it will also hind your brain’s ability to perform in class. Let’s go over the importance of sleep and a few tips to help you maximize your college experience.

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Solving Problems With Problems

By Kali George

Picture this: You’re in your first abnormal psychology class learning about endless psychological disorders, and possible diagnoses. Your brain is cluttered with new information and you’re not sure how you’re going to recall it for your first test. Come time for test day you’re struggling to remember examples of obsessive compulsive behaviors, but sure enough you remember a prime example that your professor had given you on the famous show, Hoarders. Without a doubt you are able to use the analogy in order to remember the original concept discussed in class.

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I Can Only Imagine—Using Visual Imagery to Get That A

By Michelle Knepp

Congratulations! You’ve made it to college!  A whole new adventure stretches in front of you.  New friends, fun times, and oh yeah, that dreaded word, TESTS.  You have probably developed some system of studying while in high school.  Maybe that has worked well for you, OR maybe it hasn’t.  One of the challenges new college students face is the AMOUNT of information they are asked to learn in a short time.  How are you going to learn all that information and RETAIN it for the test?  Researchers have learned that HOW information is learned and put into our long-term memory is very important!  This is called ENCODING.  Using VISUAL IMAGES to get information into our long-term memory can be a real benefit when trying to RETRIEVE that information later.  When we retrieve information, we are taking it out of our long-term memory and putting it into our working memory (1).  This can is very helpful at test time! Continue reading “I Can Only Imagine—Using Visual Imagery to Get That A”