Tag: memory

Posted on

Let’s Learn Some Vocab

By Olivia Falls

If you have ever taken any anatomy, psychology, or physics classes, you know the importance of learning and memorizing vocabulary words. Now I know that there are other classes that you can think of where vocabulary was also important, but in my opinion, these were the biggest ones. In these three classes every vocabulary word was important and came back up later in the class. All classes have vocabulary words that you should learn for a test, but with most you can get away with doing a quick review right before the test without actually knowing the words. But, for those classes in which each vocabulary word is needed and necessary to understand the future material, a new strategy is needed. What’s the new strategy? So glad you asked! Using a technique called paired-associate learning, you will be better able to learn and recall the meanings of your vocabulary words. The technique that I am going to talk about might be one that you already use, but simply did not know what it was called. But, regardless of if you have already been using this technique or are just now learning about it, this blog will be helpful in improving your ability to recall information.

Continue reading “Let’s Learn Some Vocab”
Posted on

Do You Want to Pass your Next Test?

By Haley Haggard

Have you ever failed a test before even though you studied for hours on end? Let me guess how you studied, you copied down what was on the power-point word for word and thought “well that should be enough!”. Well, you were wrong. When you are frantically trying to keep up with the professor and copying down word for word from the PowerPoint you are not processing what is being said because you are processing on a shallow level. This is where the level of processing theory comes in, it is going to help you process information at a deeper level to help you remember what is going on in class. I am going to teach you about the level of processing theory and how you can use it to your advantage when studying for your next test.

Continue reading “Do You Want to Pass your Next Test?”
Posted on

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.

Continue reading “Dual-Task Methodology”
Posted on

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.

Continue reading “Throwing Shade: The Art of Using Color to Study”
Posted on

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.

Continue reading “Respect the Concept”
Posted on

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!

Posted on

Dual Coding: Two Perspectives in Learning

By Marisa Murillo

Have you ever wondered how to store information easier in your memory? I have always failed to remember things because I did not simply know how to study memorization. The fact is, I didn’t need to study memorization, but I needed to learn and comprehend the information to actually gain knowledge on certain topics. In high school, many students may not have to study for their exams or quizzes but that all changes in college. College pushes students to study in order to learn the information they will be later tested on and have to apply to their future careers. Dual coding theory is a theory that attempts to explain cognition in terms of two separate yet partly interconnected systems. The two systems can work independently of each other or they can work together in an integrated way, often applying better outcomes. These two systems include a verbal system specialized for dealing with language and a non-verbal system for representing and processing knowledge about objects and events. Dual coding has a lot to deal with the concreteness of information. The theory is known to predict the information that is being dually encoded should be remembered approximately twice as well as information likely to be singly encoded. The best study method for any student is the cued recall of information and specifically associated with this theory is the conceptual peg hypothesis. Students can create questions or simple quizzes after lectures to better learn the information through recall for a better knowledge of the information in the future.

Posted on

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?

Posted on

Take Note, Freshmen: Why Good Note-Taking Skills are Key to Success

By Carrigan Waltz

You’re a freshman in college, so you’ve probably taken notes a time or two in your academic career thus far. You probably think that you’ve got them mastered at this point. But are you actually missing out on important information? Could the way you take notes actually improve your recall of the information? The answer is yes. Taking thorough, well-structured notes can help you recall information better, spend less time studying, and improve your grades in the long run.

Posted on

Chunking Through College Stress

By Rhianna Cyr

Freshman year of high school I took the introduction to agriculture class. While in this class we had to memorize the National FFA Creed written by E. M. Tiffany. This creed is made up of 5 short paragraphs describing what it means to be an FFA member and the beliefs of the program, that each member should represent. In order to help us memorize it, my teacher had me and my classmates memorize each paragraph, to recite each week. In other words, week one on Monday, we start memorizing paragraph one, then recite it on Friday. Week two, we memorized paragraph two, to recite on that next Friday, and so on, for five weeks. This process of learning, one paragraph at a time made it much easier to store the creed in long term memory. Later, in my sophomore year of college, I learned the name of this simple process. So, keep reading to find out!