Thursday, May 10, 2012

Student Reflections from Spring 2012


I am reading the final papers from students in my Learning Strategies course.  Most of the students are on probation and are taking this course to learn how to be academically successful. There are several themes running through the papers that my students report are important to academic success:

Sleep – We are learning more and more about the importance of sleep in many areas, one of which is learning.  It is difficult to concentrate and learn when you are tired.

Chunking – Instead of working with a huge amount of material at once, break it down into small “chunks” and learn those parts, then put the information together into the whole piece.  (Of course, each “chunk” must be a logical section.)

Review notes as soon as possible after each class – Students who did this were amazed at how well they learned the material and how well they then did on exams.

Academics are more important than socializing – Most of the students who were on probation reported that last semester they spent more time socializing than studying.  Once their priorities were switched and they put more importance on their academics, they grades greatly improved.

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