Category: Study Skills

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Frustration? No More!

By Reece Putrich

When studying for an exam, do you try hard to remember everything? Then when you get the exam, you go mind blank and forget it all? Well, this is because you may have shallow processing. Shallow processing happens when you choose to only try and remember the physical features of an object or task. (1) This may happen when you are in a science class and must remember a diagram. While you may be having to memorize the diagram, you may possibly only try to remember the pictures and features you can see. On the other hand, if you were trying to pay close attention to the words or definitions this would then be called deep processing. (1) Deep processing allows our brain to hold more memories and allows our minds to remember information better. You are probably wondering where shallow processing and deep processing come from.

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Memory Consolidation, a Helpful Study Tool

By Frannie Heckman

Memories are a huge factor in learning, studying, and just your everyday life as student. Learning the processes of memories and how certain memories become short-term and some become long-term, where they are in your brain, and learning how sleep can affect you, can actually be a benefit for studying and your future GPA. While studying many students just take in as much information as possible in a short amount of time this is not always the best method. Consolidation process of memories is transforming them into a more stable, longer- lasting form. (1) This can also be helpful to students to get the information they need while having it last longer in the process.

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Survival of the Studious: How Adaptive Behaviors Can Improve Your Learning

By Daizjah Shannon

Active learning techniques like summarizing, note-taking, and quizzing help you engage with the material and remember it better. These techniques are adaptive because they help you retain important information for future use. Active learning techniques can be used in a variety of ways to help improve your learning and retention of information, such as.

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Interleaving: Improving Memory and Recall

By Hunter Hall

Learning and retaining information for many people within today’s school system is a struggle. Information can become skewed, easy to forget, mixed around and confused with other topics learned along with the information you’re trying to retain. There are many techniques or tips and tricks one can use to become more efficient in storing information in their mind and keeping it there. One of these techniques is interleaving. Interleaving is a technique used for retaining information at a higher rate in both short term and long term memory. The process of interleaving involves mixing around questions or terms from different topics while studying or learning new material. However, there is an argument against the effectiveness of interleaving. As Doug Rohrer, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, states in his article about interleaving, the argument is that some believe it can lead to an individual confusing certain information with one another (1). The example given was the words “illusion” and “allusion” (1). Despite this, research held on interleaving has shown that it does indeed improve recall. 

Buff Doge vs. Cheems Meme | Students Who Use The; Students Who Use The; Interleave Method; Block Method | image tagged in memes,buff doge vs cheems | made w/ Imgflip meme maker
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To Cram, or Not to Cram

By Jenna Kinney

Have you ever found yourself the night before a huge exam cramming in hours of studying when you could have started days ago? Or have you spread your studying out when preparing for a huge exam? I would guess that most people would agree with the first question even myself would agree with ending up in that situation before a huge exam. But which method is more effective to receive the greatest outcome from the exam that you are preparing for? First is to know these are both cognitive processes the first one being massed practice and the second one being distributed practice. Distributed practice is establishing a time to practice and engage with the material you are studying, and you do this over many different times not just once. Massed practice is when the material you are studying is done repeatedly within a short period of time, and is only done once (6). Now the big question is which one is better?

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Don’t trust your brain, trust the text!

By Holly Martin

Have you ever procrastinated with studying the night before an exam thinking you understood what was going to be on it but once you get your exam score it’s lower than you were anticipating it to be? Almost all of us have been in a similar position where we either do not feel the need to study in general since we understand the curriculum that we have learned in class or do not feel the need to look over our notes, textbooks, or other resources. Though most of the time the answer that you were one hundred percent accurate on and you thought you knew so well happens to be incorrect. This concept of getting that wrong answer on your exam when you just had the intuition of getting it right is known as the misinformation effect. The Misinformation Effect is the tendency for information received after an event to interfere with one’s memory of the original happenings  (1). There are many conflicts within the misinformation effect that may have got our minds to have a correct approach to certain circumstances within what we thought we knew within our studying but substantially it does not always happen to be the plan or the outcome we were hoping to get.

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The Imagination of Elaboration

By Katelynn Tripp

When in the process of studying, it may feel common for you to try different strategies for obtaining the information. When we use our current knowledge and try to connect the dots on certain topics, this can be seen as elaboration. Elaboration is a core technique when learning new information because it allows us to retract previous learned knowledge, and use it to our advantage when trying to learn new information. This technique can be used in any subject, as we all have some knowledge on random things in this life. Without the skill of elaboration, I feel people would struggle with learning information. Even though this technique doesn’t determine our capabilities of learning, it does improve the likelihood of us obtaining that information. In this report, I will be explaining what the meaning of elaboration is, and some of the key techniques that go into this topic as well. 

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Do You Have Any Control ?

By Makenzie Molden

Control it’s hard to handle sometimes. Especially as a freshman since you have this new found freedom but as they also freedom come reasonability. The change from high school to college especially if your living on campus is hard enough but there I also the learning, studying and time management transition, Study, learning and time management is all so different once you start college, the same skills can sometime no linger be helpful so while your trying to make new friends, and learn your way around campus you also have to relearn how to learn and study while making sure you’re not falling behind and that where cognitive control will become your best friends especially your first year.

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Retrieve to Achieve

By Brock Bower-Preece

As incoming college freshmen, you are likely to encounter new and challenging material that requires a great deal of memorization. Whether you are studying for an exam or trying to retain information from a lecture, memorization is a critical component of academic success. Research on the correlation between note-taking and test scores does not necessarily support that just studying your notes the night before a test will lead to a good grade. Fortunately, research has shown that using retrieval practice, or actively recalling information from memory, can improve your ability to remember information and perform well on tests. By practicing retrieval, you are not only strengthening your memory, but you are also enhancing your understanding of the material, which can help you excel in your classes. In this way, retrieval practice is a valuable tool that can help you achieve academic success throughout your college career.

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