Have you found yourself questioning whether your study habits are letting you down? If that is the case, you are not alone. College students often question the study tips they use as the learning environment differs from that of high school. In high school, instructors pay keener attention to every student, and they even notice when you miss class. College is different; you get more freedom and have to find a way to create the best learning habits. So we’ve curated some fire tips for effective learning to help you succeed academically.
Table of Contents
Make Use of the Study Guide
Frank Christ developed a study guide highlighting the different stages involved in studies. They include previewing, class discussion, reviewing, studying, and checking whether you understand the concepts you were studying. This guide might seem straightforward, but many students are constantly seeking shortcuts. Shortcuts affect a student’s opportunity to understand the key concepts completely.
If you preview the course material before your lessons, you will have some understanding of what you are going to learn in class. It helps with knowledge acquisition when the professor delivers the lecture compared to when you walk into it without any idea of what you will learn. After class, reviewing helps you reflect on what was taught and boosts your memory. So don’t throw your books away until the next class session; get time to revise what you learned.
Space Out
The concept called “information overload” refers to absorbing too much information within a short duration. Many students always try to read over a long span, but this strategy can lead to information overload and affect your ability to understand. To reduce the likelihood of information overload, consider spreading your revisions over short periods across the week.
You can decide to work on a single coursework every day to avoid mixing up things and studying for long durations. You’ll learn more when you spread out your revisions, and it will also help you retain what you’ve learned for longer. It would be best to remember that success in education is not determined by how long your study sessions are but by how well you utilize them.
Create a Schedule
Do you always get caught up with assignment deadlines and turn to platforms such as MasterPapers for help? Maybe what you need is a timetable for your schoolwork. Remember spacing? It isn’t easy to spread out your studies if you don’t have a study timetable. A timetable helps you keep a list of all the tasks you need to undertake, both academic and non-academic, and the times you need to study. Many students have schedules but struggle to follow them because they are unrealistic about their time for each activity. This type of timetable will leave you struggling to keep up with it, and you’ll eventually opt out. So make it real.
Boost Your Memory
You might learn better by using different strategies for boosting your memory. The first strategy is engaging in regular exercises. Exercising regularly improves brain health and memory, a tool that enhances the ability to learn and recall information. Another effective approach is getting enough sleep. When you fail to get adequate sleep, your brain does not get time to rest, which impairs your memory.
Use Multiple Strategies
Everyone has what works for them, but don’t rely on one approach. Create a cocktail and enjoy the benefits that each method offers. Research on learning new languages has highlighted that students who incorporate different techniques like podcasts, language learning applications, and trying out the new language with friends are likelier to grasp the language faster than those who use a single technique. So, use a combination of reading books, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and group discussions to improve your ability to learn and retain information. While at it, write down what you have learned to help you reflect on your learning later.
Teach What You Have Learned
One of the main purposes of group discussions is to help individuals share their ideas. Through sharing ideas, individuals teach each other, and in the process, they learn more. Therefore, get the most out of your group meetings and study groups by sharing what you learned with the rest of the members – it’ll help boost your understanding further. Besides, while sharing information, your friends might correct you, and you will learn from the corrections.
Reconsider Multitasking
Multitasking is one of the things that affects a person’s ability to learn key concepts. Trying to do more than one task simultaneously creates a distraction and diverts your concentration. One major distraction for students is using social media while studying – flipping pages and scrolling pages. You need to set aside time for studies away from activities that might distract you and affect your ability to learn and understand.
Multitasking also increases a person’s duration to learn a new concept as distractions constantly interfere with your thought process. So it’s counterproductive to what you’ll be trying to achieve; you’ll spend more time getting things done.
It might be difficult to eradicate distractions, especially when you are a person who always wants to keep up with the latest developments. But a strategy that can help you is turning off your phone when you want to start studying. With your phone off, you will not receive pop-up notifications that might tempt you to look up your social media.
Take-Away
We all desire good grades and to attain our academic goals, but our study techniques might be getting in the way of these goals. You can steer things in the right direction by taking the time to understand the study cycle. It will help form the basis of effective learning. Also, space out your studies, improve your memory, have a schedule, and try out various study approaches. These tips will help transform your studies, and you might find yourself even studying less than you used to, but you will get better results.
