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Dual-Task Methodology

By KayeLynn Brown

As college students have you ever really thought of the most productive vs least productive ways to study and retain information? Trust me, we’re all in the same boat in one way or another. While adjusting to the college workload it can be stressful to find what works for you. What is important to note is trying to do several tasks at once is harmful to a student’s ability to learn and study information. If there’s one thing I would’ve liked to been told when I was an incoming freshman trying to learn all of this for myself – it would’ve been the greater amount or load of things you put on yourself and try to learn, will actually just hinder your ability to succeed. Dual-task methodology can help explain the reasoning behind this.

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Started from the Bottom Now We’re Here

By Kayla Enochs

            Studying has been something that a lot of students struggle with. Finding the perfect method is way more difficult than it should be. Every person is unique and not everyone can study the exact same way. So, this blog post is dedicated to giving students another studying style that they can try to their utility belt. In this blog, students will be able to learn about what the bottom-up and top-down processes are and how they can be used to study.

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Similar Problems Have Similar Solutions

By Alexander Brittain

College students have a huge responsibility in their first year of college. They are expected to achieve academic goals that they set prior to starting the school year. There are many cognitive psychology strategies that can be used to exel in the classroom. By using these strategies you will utilize your time studying and learning in the classes you take. The strategy that I am going to talk about is how to solve problems using analogies. Analogies are used to reach a goal by utilizing past information. Analogies play a key role in problem-solving, decision-making, perception, and more.

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Throwing Shade: The Art of Using Color to Study

by Merik Flatt-Beer

Do you take your notes in color? Maybe you should start.

Note taking is the one thing that remains constant throughout the years in education. Your parents took notes, their parents took notes, your professors took notes from their professors who took notes. But, your notes don’t have to be the same notes they’ve been taking all these years. Back in the day, students were stuck with sad, boring ink and pencils in the same three colors for generations. Why don’t we try something new? Nowadays, along with the invention of sparkly gel pens for the people who still write theirs in notebooks, many students have started to take notes on computers, which makes it even easier than ever before to introduce colors and graphics into your delightful shorthand. Not only does this make it more fun to take notes, but it also helps to keep you engaged, and even helps you remember the information you’re taking notes on.

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Respect the Concept

By Braden Weaver

When it comes to school, there is always those questions that absolutely stump you, whether it be a test or a homework problem. In my almost 18 year career as a student, it has got to be one of the worst feelings to be completely blank and have no clue where to begin. My previous mindset was “well its either I know it or I don’t”. Please DO NOT try this it could result in bad grades. The better way to come up with the answer is to try and remember past lessons that have similar concepts to the problem at hand, then start breaking down that problem in order to solve it. This is where conceptual knowledge comes into play. Conceptual knowledge refers to the knowledge of, or understanding of concepts, principles, theories, models, and classifications. Now you’re probably thinking “how on earth am I going to be able to do this in a limited time?”. The process of connecting a lesson to another lesson is a lot quicker than you think. There are actually a few ways you can boost your conceptual knowledge to make you a better student guaranteed! One of the first ways is to be able to group things just by looking at them. For example, look at the picture below. Just by looking at it you can already tell what those objects are. That’s right, they’re vegetables! The second way you can better improve your concept skills is to be able to make connections between things. If I had a list of broccoli, zucchini, and celery, it would be easy to put all of them in a Venn diagram to find out differences and similarities between the three vegetables. Lastly, students like yourself can transfer the ideas that you can get from vegetables and use it to find something more important. For example, which vegetable is considered the healthiest? Just something that is a little more complex.

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How functional fixedness impacts people

By Alayna Missel

Have you heard of the term functional fixedness? Properly not considering you are a freshman in college. I am here to give you some tips on studying with regards to functional fixedness. The term functional fixedness is defined as when old information that a person has learned interferes with their ability to process and learn new information. This happens because functional fixedness is a form of a fixation. A fixation is when a person focuses on the one singular, often the most common use of an item and this inhibits the person to think outside of the box in which they could be able to use the item in different ways. Why am I telling you these definitions you might ask? I am telling you because in order to be successful sometimes you have to think outside the box when looking for a solution to a problem.

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Blind to Reality

By Kennedy Savage

You’re driving down the road windows down and music blasting, while looking out the window you notice the sunset and people going about their day. All of a sudden your focus shifts and you notice a car swerving into your lane, unable to break fast enough you rear end the car causing a traffic incident. This split second failure to notice fully visible, yet often times unexpected objects is and example of inattentional blindness.  

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Does Depth Matter?

By Emily Lange

Have you ever been sitting in a lecture, copying notes from the slideshow and suddenly realize you have no clue what you wrote for the last three slides? You have been feverishly copying the slides as quickly as you can, but how have you not learned a single thing? This is because you have been processing the information in a shallow manner, meaning that you were not paying close attention to the meaning of what you were writing. How can you learn to process the information you learn in class at a deeper level? Using Levels of Process theory can help you to become a better student!

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Don’t bet on it! How availability heuristics hinder our study practices.

By Kate Summers

Picture this: You are walking down the hallway, out of the classroom when you hear, “Hey! You! Yes, YOU! Are you ready for our test on Friday?”. You shrug off the comment because inside you are really freaking out about the test. Your first big college test is just days away…and you haven’t even started studying. You run back to the dorm to start studying and studying and studying. All of a sudden it is Friday, TEST DAY and you can’t remember any of the information you have studied for the past two days. What went wrong? How could studying result in a bad grade?