Stop, Drop and Roll Your Way Into a 4.0 GPA

By Kyle Oakes

Have you ever left class and wondered why you can barely remember a thing? I want you to try to remember what you were doing in that class. If you are like most college students, you probably snuck in a text message during the class, or maybe you clicked on that Facebook notification that popped up. Maybe you just dozed off. All of these could be affecting your grade drastically. In order to help your grade, you want to set those notifications, and ringer, on silent for the duration of the course, and stop dividing your attention to the wrong thing.

Continue reading “Stop, Drop and Roll Your Way Into a 4.0 GPA”

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.

Continue reading “Test Better Using the Testing Effect”

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).

Continue reading “Only three steps and you’re master of elaboration!”

Using Visual Imagery to Improve Memory for College Exams

By Ve’Jhon Johnson and MaryJane Lukas

Your freshman year of college is such an exciting time in your life where you have an opportunity for a fresh start socially, individually and academically. You will be living on your own for the first time in a different environment with complete control over your own life. Just like you will have to adapt to this new environment, you will have to adapt to other parts of college, the academics. So exciting!

Continue reading “Using Visual Imagery to Improve Memory for College Exams”