The Psychological Version of a Web Diagram

By Kelton O’Grady

“School.”

Your brain has just been primed. Before you even finished reading the word above, you had many things popping into your head. Mental images such as a building, teachers, homework, or even a classroom. (1). The effects on priming are predicted only when assuming that the typical time of activation-spread is in the order of hundreds of milliseconds. Let’s take a second and reflect on how your mind created these images, maybe a web diagram, (like you were taught at a young age to use for essays) connecting all similar ideas once you saw the word. This is one idea I wish I would have used more often my freshman year of college to better understand a wider variety of information and how they connect to many other things in life in different ways. 

Continue reading “The Psychological Version of a Web Diagram”

‘Expert-ology’: A Novice’s Guide to Problem-Solving

By Malika Handa and Roselee Ledesma

Okay so you made it to college! You will be starting in the fall, but now you have AP tests, final exams, high school graduation, and perhaps a summer job that awaits since you are saving for your future (or should be…). Well, congratulations you are going to college! Yes, starting college is a very big deal! I was definitely encouraged to dream big, so naturally I had to plan big and for that I had to think big . . . big, big, big! What if we use small steps to achieve big plans? “Small” and practical steps can be more manageable for you.

When thinking about problem-solving it is important to recognize that there is a difference in the way experts and novices solve problems. Novices are people who are inexperienced in a field of study, just like college students who are starting to build their expertise. If you consider yourself a novice, this is for you!

 

Continue reading “‘Expert-ology’: A Novice’s Guide to Problem-Solving”