Study Skills Help!: How to Study-some help from the Pros

Study Tips from Study Pros

When You Cannot Sing, Study in the Shower

I like to organize my study materials by topic and importance so that I can see at a glance the things I need to remember.  One method is to set up study cards or flash cards and order them into recipe boxes.  Yes, this is old school but it allows me to keep my hands on what I need to know.  I can carry them wherever I go and study while I’m walking or performing chores.  If I laminate them, I can even study in the shower.  They can also be set up digitally using a slide deck or study apps like Quizlet.

Another trick is to mark textbook pages with labeled sticky bookmarks.  This can be done physically and digitally, though I like to actually sleep with the books I’m studying.  Many years ago, I heard that Edgar Cayce could learn from books that he put under his pillow.  Though I never developed that talent, I find that books offer comfort as pillow companions and if I wake up in the night, I can read them on paper or on a lighted screen.  It’s important to keep up a steady habit of studying, rather than to wait until just before a test.  I want to learn and use the material as I go along, not cram and flush, which results in undigested material and too much coffee.

When it’s time to take a test, I make sure to quickly read all of the questions before starting to answer them.  When I was very young, I used to start in on the first question enthusiastically only to discover that I would have answered most of the other questions in that one essay.  I was dependent on my teacher to sort out enough credit for me to pass.  Organization by topic and importance has been my best help to study.

Dr. Suzanne Baldon
Professor, Criminal Justice/Forensic Science

Study Early On and Often, but Don’t Forget to Reward Yourself

• Don’t try to cram the night before the test.  Start early and study a little bit every day, gradually adding on more and more information as you study.
• Create flash cards, Quizlets, or sample questions and practice them daily the week before the test (or earlier, if possible).  If creating flash cards, use color to separate concepts or ideas.  This will give you a visual to connect to when trying to recall the information. 
• Make it fun—study with a friend, create a game out of it, create a song about the concepts, reward yourself for the amount of time studied or amount of questions you answered correctly.  This “gaming” element will make it easier to recall the information when it’s time for the test.

Kayla Willis
Assistant Professor of Education

Keep a Pen Handy

I study best with a pen in my hand. Writing while studying has several benefits: I tend to understand and remember more, I tend to think more critically about the material, and I tend to generate better questions and better ideas. If I am reading an article or textbook chapter, for example, I will write in the margins my summary statements, definitions of unfamiliar words, questions the text raises for me, and connections I see. This benefits me far more than passively reading or even highlighting and underlining.

Picking up a pen is also a good reminder to put down (and ignore) my phone. Research has shown that we typically spend as much as one-third of our “study” time distracted by technology. Not only do distractions increase the amount of time it takes me to finish studying, but they also make it much more difficult to maintain the level of focus that leads to my best thinking. Learning is one of the most rewarding things I do, so I want to do it as well as possible. 

Jeremy Leatham
Associate Professor of English  

Some Words to the Wise about Notetaking

“I have to be comfortable and away from distractions to study well: which means leaving my phone in another room and using a website blocker for sites that distract me. I’m a consummate note-taker, so I generally study by organizing my notes and then reading through them on my couch. Good notetaking in class has saved me a lot of study time outside of class.”

Bryant A Windham  
Coordinator of Academic Support & Tutoring, McLennan Community College

 

When it comes to study skills, there is much more involved than just studying!

Outside of the Classroom

• Read the syllabus at the beginning of the semester and put down important dates all the way out. I put them in a few days ahead to “trick myself”.
• Create an electronic and physical calendar. If you only have it on your phone or electronics and it gets lost, you will be devastated.
• Keep a consistent day and time for studying. If it is on your schedule regularly it will become habitual.
• Find a quiet spot with few distractions. When studying, turn all electronics off except for music. I find going somewhere like a library or Starbucks works. At home you can always find something “to do” that will distract you from studying.
• Let your family/friends, etc. know you are studying and won’t be available.
• Give yourself breaks to walk around, eat something, etc.
• Break up your studying into chunks throughout the day, week, or month depending on how long you have.
• The day of an exam, do NOT over study and stress yourself out. Find something that calms you and takes your mind off the exam directly before (I like to go for a run).
• When doing course readings, take notes…try Cornell note-taking or do whatever works for you. This helps so you don’t have to re-read everything. Once you are done, go back through your notes and highlight the most important things.
• Use physical index cards for tests. Just writing them out will be a start to studying.
• If you know the test is going to be essay based, practice your form with made up prompts that are from your course information. Who knows? You may guess and write about what the real prompt will be.
• COMMUNICATE with your professor outside of class. Meet with her/him and ask questions. You may get hints about the test.

Inside the Classroom

• Sit up front so there are less distractions.
• Be prepared…have pencils, highlighters, sticky notes, and a computer.
• Use abbreviations when taking notes to save time.
• Ask questions! This is HUGE. It will keep you actively engaged AND you will find out more information than just listening to a lecture. You may even get hints to what is on a test.
• If a professor repeats something more than once, star or highlight it on your notes. It most likely is important to them and may be on a test.
• Pay attention to cues or hints. If the professor says, “This is important” or something like that, star or highlight this within your notes.
• If it is a complex concept, try to think of a similar example and jot it down. This will help later when you are trying to recall it.

Dr. Tonya Trepinski-Ochoa
Learning Framework Coordinator and Instructor  

 

Tom Proctor’s Essential Tips to Successful Studies

Mr. Tom Proctor,
    What habits or practices helped you the most when you were a student?

• By finding a quiet place, where I wouldn’t be interrupted, in which to study and have access to research materials—frequently this was in a library;
• Setting a weekly and daily study plan of what needs to be done with the easiest items listed first and the hardest items last (this gave me early wins that built my confidence and kept me accountable);
• Breaking down the readings/class lectures into a simplified written outline of key points/ideas (this made it easier to remember the details and see how they fit together, while alerting me to unanswered questions I need to ask the instructor/professor); and 
• Getting an overview of the main ideas in the assigned texts by skimming over the table of contents and the index (this helps in providing a context in which to place the details and helping see how it all fits together).

By employing these four approaches I was able to complete both an undergraduate and a graduate college degree, despite being told by a high school guidance counselor that I was too stupid to get accepted to or graduate from any college.

Tom Proctor
Director, Program Review, Planning and Assessment
McLennan Community College

 
Improve Your Recall through Multiple Reviews

            One study skill that helps me to learn is Anki. Anki is an intelligent flashcards program that makes it easy to recall what you learned. It’s based on Distributed practice (or "spaced repetition") it remembers how well you've learned each card, and shows you them less and less frequently as time goes on. It's easier to explain with a diagram (see below) -- notice how the "forgetting curve" gets shallower the more times the memory is tested (and strengthened), which allows the reviews themselves to become more and more spaced out in time. This allows you to keep adding new cards every day without the number of required reviews growing so much that it becomes unmanageable.

Arthur Wilson
PC Specialist, MCC Information Systems and Services