One of my students approached me the other day and asked if he should withdraw from his Psychology course. He said that he earned a 52% on the first exam and a 54% on the second and was afraid of failing the course. He reported that he had studied for the first exam by reviewing his notes several times and that he studied even “harder” for the second exam.
What do you think actually happened?
The problem was that he just did more of the same thing when preparing for the second exam. When he said he “studied harder” he actually meant that he just reviewed his notes a few more times, but did not really do anything different when preparing for the second exam.
What should he have done?
For learning to occur it takes varied and repeated exposure over time. My student needed to use more strategies to learn his Psychology. For example, he could have:
- Made study cards for the vocabulary
- Made a study guide to help him understand the information
- Joined a study group and discussed the information
- Used recitation – restating the information in his own words to be sure he knows it beyond the same words used in his notes
- Made sure he understand the examples used in the textbook
The happy results:
He used several more study strategies for the third exam and earned 75%. He stayed in the course and expects to earn a passing grade.
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