How To Be An Effective Student
While these suggestions are not guaranteed to turn you into an "A" student, they do provide some solid concepts and suggestions based on a scientific understanding of how learning occurs. Technical terms from psychology (which, if you're a PSY 202 student, you should know!) are listed below in bold italics, like this. Yes, some (but by no means all) of this information is the same as, or similar to, what was listed on "I Don't Like My Exam Grade, Now What?" But some of it is different, and it won't hurt you to read the other parts twice, anyway.
General
1. Students who are most likely to succeed are those who make helpful, not harmful, attributions for academic difficulties. Don’t set yourself up for failure by giving up prematurely or by searching for someone or something else to blame. Instead, make a specific diagnosis of what’s going wrong and develop a strategy to fix it. Studies indicate that half of academic failures are due, not to a lack of ability, but to faulty assumptions – self-blame or scapegoating the instructor, neither of which do much good.
Note Taking
2. Effective note taking requires that you learn how to listen to, think about, and accurately record information at the same time. This is easier said than done, but a good place to start is to pay attention to the relative balance you maintain among these three tasks during class. If you can't keep up with the flow of information, or if you find yourself being more of a passive scribe than an active, critical thinker and learner, try using an audio tape recorder to support your note-taking efforts.
3. Learn how to tell the difference between important and unimportant lecture information. If you try to write down everything you hear, you're attempting the impossible! Look for behavioral and verbal cues that a given piece of information is important. Examples are redundancy (information is repeated more than once, or more than one way, or is presented both visually and verbally), paralinguistic cues such as tone of voice, and so forth.
4. Find ways to double-check the accuracy and completeness of your encoding of information. One way is to try to deliver the lecture to someone else based only on your own notes! If you can't, your notes are incomplete, or else you don't really understand what you have written. In my classes, brief lecture notes are usually provided as a double-check for you.
5. Avoid common note taking gaps and problems such as writing down numbered lists without labeling the list. Also, use attentional devices in your notes such as a ? to mean "I don't understand this, I need to ask", ! to mean "this seems particularly important or central", and "ex." to mean "this is a specific example or illustration of an abstract concept". You also might want to use some symbol, like #, to indicate terms that are easily confused with one another, since a common cause of forgetting is interference. Get in the habit of leaving a blank space at the top or side margin of your notes so you can make additional notes to yourself when later reviewing your original in-class notes.
6. Avoid attention lapses, particularly due to dichotic listening (you are trying to listen both to the lecture and to a friend one chair away, which can't successfully be done). Or, if you simply lack motivation for the class or find yourself lapsing into daydreams, you'll need to find ways to link the lecture material to something you do care about -- such as your intended major or career choice.
7. Get in the habit of reviewing your notes within one hour of taking them, since most forgetting takes place within one hour of an event. If you wait more than a week to review your notes, you may find them hopelessly uninterpretable. This is one of many reasons why "cramming" is a terrible study strategy, though it's better than not studying at all!
Studying
8. Devote sufficient time to studying. Obvious as this may seem, it matters... a good rule of thumb is to spend from 2 to 4 hours studying for every hour you spend in class. Space your study time evenly throughout the semester to enhance memory consolidation. Aim for a regular time and place that allows external stimulus cues to become associated with studying.
9. Avoid state-dependent learning problems. If you learn information under one set of conditions, it can be difficult to recall the information under a different set of conditions. Thus, your study environment should mimic that of the eventual exam environment -- it should be quiet, free from distractions, and (at least relatively) private.
10. Make sure you engage in active rehearsal, not just mindlessly reading through your notes (maintenance rehearsal). You know you're in active rehearsal when you ask yourself questions about the material as you review it and engage in honest self-testing of your understanding as you go. That’s what the study guides in my classes are for… use them! Try to "think like a teacher" and anticipate what kinds of exam questions I might write. Use the pretest offered in my classes to help you, but don't rely passively on it; keep your mind in gear as you attempt to "write your own pretest".
11. Generate retrieval cues for yourself, which can include visual images, mnemonic devices, and so forth. The more bizarre and unforgettable the cues, the better they work.
12. If you find yourself starting to associate studying with negative emotions like anxiety or frustration, stop for awhile. Otherwise, you may heighten forgetting due to repression.
13. Understand the difference between concrete and formal operational thought. In most college classes, the ability to link concrete examples to abstract theories is the key to doing well. Be sure you can generate original examples of concepts and theories, and explain why they are correct. Don't just engage in rote memorization, but make sure that you can rephrase complex terms in your own words.
14. Use the concept of the zoped to help you wean yourself from overreliance on your book, notes, and other instructional aids. Use these heavily in your early study times, but in the week or so before the exam, try to remember information without "peeking" (then, check your accuracy so you don't unwittingly memorize faulty information). Learn how to use inner speech to "talk yourself through" tough questions... this is the same skill you'll need during the actual exam.
15. Take advantage of knowledge about your temperament (and that of your instructor) to guide your study efforts. Click here... and here... and here... for information about this concept. In a nutshell, there are four basic temperaments:
Commander or Guardian = concrete linear learning style
Adventurer or Artisan = concrete nonlinear learning style
Systematizer or Rational = abstract linear learning style
Harmonizer or Idealist = abstract nonlinear learning style
Do you know which one best fits you? Your instructor?
Test Taking
16. Take the first few minutes of the exam period to skim the entire exam to get an overview of the length, content, difficulty, and variability in question type. Remembering that you do not have to answer questions in order, mark the most difficult questions so you can return to them later. Allocate your time so you can pace yourself and not run short.
17. Monitor yourself to maintain an appropriate balance between impulsive and deliberate response styles. Respond too impulsively, and you will finish early but make many unnecessary errors, often because you did not read the question thoroughly and accurately. Respond too deliberately, and you will run out of time. Between these two extremes lies an optimal style.
18. Circle the words in each question that tell you what is required (this is especially important in essay questions). Key words include compare, contrast, define, illustrate, apply, utilize, explain, defend, justify, interpret, identify.
19. Some other suggestions about essay questions: (a) Circle all the verbs (action words) that tell you what you have to do to construct a complete answer to an essay question. For instance, “compare and contrast” means that you must say BOTH how two things are alike AND how they are different. Are you asked to give an example and explain how you know the example is correct? Are you asked to show why a given example matches or exemplifies a theory? Make sure you’re doing what is asked of you; many students answer only the first half of a two-part question and then forget about (or fail to recognize) the other half. (b) In general, good essays in a course like this one will often require that you first explain a concept or theory, then identify or generate an example, then show how the theory (abstract element) and the example (concrete element) are linked – proving that the example fits the theory. If stuck, use this as a general sort of outline. (c) Don’t expect me to be able to read your mind… my telepathic skills are remarkably poor. If you want to say something, write it down. (d) Always write something – never leave a blank. If you have nothing else to offer, provide a piece of autobiography. Blank pages can’t garner any partial credit.
20. Some other suggestions about multiple choice questions: (a) Never completely skip an item; there is no penalty for guessing. (b) Often, it is easier to eliminate one or more WRONG answers than it is to immediately spot the RIGHT answer; doing this can increase your odds of a correct guess considerably. (c) It can help to try to answer the question BEFORE looking at any of the response alternatives. That way, you won’t be fooled by response choices that are deliberately designed to trap, trick, or fool you. (d) Unless you have a clear and compelling reason for doing so, never change your answer; trust your gut. Research indicates that first impressions have a greater than chance probability of being correct; what’s going on neurologically is that your right hemisphere knows the answer, but can’t articulate how it knows. (e) As an absolute last resort, count how many times you have used the A, B, C, and D responses; most instructors, including myself, try to make each of these the correct answer approximately the same proportion of the time, so in guessing, an underused letter is a good selection.
21. Use appropriate self-talk to keep yourself in a solution-focused mode during the exam. Remind yourself of the steps you need to take to work your way through a complex question. Use self-encouragers like "I'm doing great so far" to keep you going. Remembering the Yerkes-Dodson Law, don't let excessive anxiety cause mental blocks; find ways to break the anxiety cycle if it begins to get in the way of productive mental activity during the exam.
After The Exam
22. Relax. Introductory psychology students can drop their lowest unit exam grade with no penalty. Students in higher level courses can’t do that, but it’s early in the semester. In all courses, there are ways to earn a grade other than taking exams (e.g., alternative project option, term paper, in-class presentation, reaction essays). Take full advantage of these opportunities especially if you are the sort of person who does not “test well”.
23. Go through your exam with a fine-toothed comb, comparing it to the answer key (found elsewhere on this Web site). Try to figure out where you went wrong. Then schedule an appointment to talk through the exam with me. Things to pay attention to: (a) Did you do appreciably better on the pretest than on the real exam? (If so, test anxiety or time pressure may be significant issues for you; Student Services has resources that can help you.) (b) Did you do appreciably better on one part of the exam (essay vs. multiple choice) than the other? A significant disparity (more than 5 points) may suggest some important facts about your learning style, learning strengths, and test-taking strategies.
24. Take advantage of tutoring opportunities on campus. The names of current tutors and their schedules will be posted here as they become available, and can also be found at the campus tutoring center.
25. Email me, see me during office hours, or make an appointment if my scheduled office hours don't work for you. I'm here to help, but I can only meet you halfway... you have to bridge the rest of the gap by acknowledging your need for help.
26. Above all, put your academic performance in context. It’s one class. A bad grade is not a death sentence. Academic success is important; so is being a generous, responsible, caring, decent human being.