All Posts Tagged With: "studying"
Hidden secrets of academic success
What you can’t see might hurt you.
While conscious efforts to maximize the quantity and quality of studying may indeed be important to meeting your full academic potential, there are many factors that influence academic success beyond your immediate awareness. Two such factors are perhaps especially relevant during this time of year as exams approach and as soon-to-be former freshmen choose roommates to live with next year.
The first is known as encoding specificity. Firmly established by Canadian neuroscientist Endel Tulving, this phenomenon states that recalling previously learned information will be most effective when the context in which you learned it is replicated. Thus, students who write a test in a room very different to the room in which they learned the information (or studied it), will do worse on the test than if the rooms were similar.
Encoding specificity can also be important in mental states, with research even showing that information learned while drunk can be better recalled when drunk! While it probably isn’t a good idea to study and write your finals while inebriated, the principle is more practically applicable by realizing that even just imagining the context in which you learned something can help you recall it. A good review of some research into this phenomenon can be found here.
A second influence on your academic success that may remain beyond your awareness is your roommate. Working with freshmen at Darthmouth College, where students are randomly assigned roommates, economist Bruce Sacerdote found that students’ GPAs were significantly influenced by the GPA of their roommates (see the report for all the glorious mathematical details). While planning who to live with next year, it is advisable to choose smart people.
And thus continues the unrelenting struggle to balance future concerns (academic success) with more immediate pleasure (living with/near more carefree and fun loving friends), all the while keeping an eye on those influences that aren’t as immediately apparent… such is the nature of university life.
Getting the most out of your professor
Professors dish on how students can learn more from them outside of the classroom
There is one person in your lecture theatre who is a little different from everyone else. No, I’m not talking about that guy who never bathes, who whispers to himself as he takes notes, and who seems completely unaware that his nose whistles every time he exhales.
I’m talking about the one standing up at the front of the room, talking; the one who everyone who isn’t playing with their computer or phone is watching: your prof.
I’m sure that your prof seems like a lofty intellectual who is much too clever, important and busy to want to talk to the likes of you, but I’ve got news for you: your prof is a human being, and it gets lonely up there at the front of the room when you’ve spent an hour talking and nobody has asked a single question or given any other indication they’ve understood a word you’ve said.
Educating you and making sure that you understand the course material is part of your prof’s job, and talking directly to your prof can make a world of difference to what you get out of a class. What you may find surprising is that your prof (probably) wants to talk to you. Don’t take our word for it; we surveyed an assortment of professors from across the country and two of the most common things we heard from them were that they enjoy talking to students, and that too few students take the time to talk to their professors outside of class.
Talking to students lets profs know that they’re actually getting through. “I love it when students come to me and ask questions,” wrote professor Carolyn Eyles of McMaster University. “It shows they are interested in the material and I’ll always spend time with them.”
The questions students ask provide professors with valuable feedback about their communication style, letting them know what is and what is not being understood by their classes. “I do learn a lot from student questions. I learn to communicate a lot better,” said Patangi Rangachari, also of McMaster.
But what can talking to your professors do for you? Lots. There are reasons why you go to campus every day, instead of just staying home and learning from a textbook.
The most obvious thing your professor can do is help you understand something from the lecture or the readings that you just can’t get. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way to approach whatever concept you’re having trouble with. “Explain to us where we came short in the lecture, and we will offer you another perspective on the issue so you can understand it better,” says Mercedes Rowinsky-Geurts of Wilfred Laurier University.
If you talk to them in person, many professors will give you a more detailed preview of what is going to be on an upcoming exam, to help you focus your studying. Some will even provide sample exam questions to practice on. Profs will discuss essay topics with students, and may be willing to go over an outline or even a complete draft of your essay with you.
Studytime self-nudges
Avoid distractions and stay healthy
It’s crunch time for me and my classmates at SBS. Time to master finance, economics, marketing, strategy, decision science (aka statistics) and financial reporting in a week before exams start to hit one after the other. It makes for days of full, focused study, one after the other.
I know through this that I need to make progress through the material while maintaining my health (a huge thing in Oxford, where people come from around the world to engage in a particularly intense life), and not dropping the most important non-school stuff. I also know that I’m not naturally good at this, without a little help. So I help myself, with compensating nudges. Some examples:
- I’ve created a little colour-coded spreadsheet, so I get the satisfaction of changing tasks to green as they are done (ex: Finance, problem set 1, Marketing practice exam…). This almost makes finishing an accounting problem set fun. Almost.
- I keep healthy food within arm’s reach, so I can reach for the banana chips when hungry, instead of another avocado melt. Same thing with the multivitamins.
- I’ve been rotating through environments. My 600+ year old college library is a good one, with little but dusty books and the sound of oil trickling through the heaters. No internet either. It’s pretty hard to get distracted in there.
- Ive nailed the music soundtrack. Only 9 songs from Bonobo, Phoenix, Cinematic Orchestra and Zero 7. It plays in rotation for hours in the background. I suspect if these songs now came on in the car at home, I’ll start instinctively working through the capital asset pricing model on the window fog. If I’m too tired for this mix, I jack it up with Daft Punk or Alexisonfire. That gets things done. This has now approached Pavlovian response whenever one of the songs comes on.
- In order to keep growing the First Drop community as we move towards launch (one of the few things that can’t wait for exams), I’ve made sure the Facebook Group is number two on my firefox toolbar. Thus I instinctively click it when procrastinating, checking group progress and adding articles, where I once neglected it. By being the second toolbar link, it has become top of mind, where it needs to be.
My friend has gone a step further, locking up his laptop and installing himself on the other side of town. Good stuff.
None of this is new. We all set up little systems to help us subconsciously shift behaviour. What are your tricks?
How to survive exam period- with great marks
That was easy.
No more teachers’ dirty looks? Not quite yet
Making the most of your study time so you get the best test mark you can
At most universities, classes are now over. Your assignments are handed in. You don’t have to get out of bed for that nasty 8:30 am class. And your first final exam isn’t for two weeks.
With all this free time on your hands, you:
a.) party like it’s 2010;
b.) sleep until noon then spend the rest of the day watching TV shows on your laptop in bed; or,
c.) hit the books.
(Hint: this isn’t one of those trick multiple-choice questions, where the obvious-sounding answer is the wrong one.)
As much as you feel that you deserve a break (and you probably do), stay focused for just a couple more weeks before shifting into the somnolence of turkey time. Organizing your time effectively now will ensure you get the mark you deserve after working your butt off all semester.
For some students, exam period can be incredibly stressful. (Breathe deeply and read our column on stress). Studying thoroughly and efficiently, not wasting time on unimportant material and developing a test-taking strategy are the three keys to doing well on your exam. And knowing you did everything you could to prepare, you should be able to sleep soundly the night before the big test day.
Many students think that the more time they spend studying, the better the mark they’ll get, but that isn’t necessarily true; you’ll better retain material if you study in a larger number of smaller chunks of time, rather than cramming studying into a couple of 12-hour sessions in the two days before the exam. So, before you throw yourself into studying, pause to make a study plan. There are a finite number of hours between now and your exam, so you need to budget your time accordingly.
The first 30
Our on-the-ground undergrad reports on his debut month
I consider myself something of an idealist. I’m reasonably conscious of the many problems in the world and of the effects my actions have on the planet and its inhabitants, and I try to act accordingly. Of course, I hope others will do the same, and perhaps I too easily apply my values when judging the actions and beliefs of other people, governments, corporations, etc. My idealism has also earned me regular reminders from friends and family to “take yourself less seriously.”
I’ve just begun my first year at the University of Toronto, and I’m aware that this is a time when values and personalities can be challenged, shifted and eventually—potentially—solidified. People tend to progress, maybe unconsciously, from idealism to pragmatism as they mature. Idealism becomes a sort of nostalgia: you remember “the good old days,” but are resigned to the fact that those days are decidedly in the past.
Even at the tender age of 18, I have noticed this shift in myself. The more I learn, the more complex things become. The more I realize the barriers that lie in the way of the more equitable, sustainable, logical world I idealize, the less likely it seems that my idealism stands a chance.
Most universities in Canada have become veritable degree-churning machines. A bachelor’s degree today is yesterday’s high school diploma. Six million Chinese graduate each year into an already saturated global job market. A desire to do good is often dismissed as naive or met with suspicion. All in all, there doesn’t seem to be much room left for idealism.
We’ll see what kind of shape mine is in after a month of university.
Touchdown
Aug. 30: If you’re moving to a new city for university, it’s a good idea to arrive a few days before school starts so you can have a chance to explore the area around your new home. Once the craziness of Frosh Week begins, followed immediately by your first classes, you’re not likely to venture far off campus, so familiarizing yourself with the neighbourhood can give you a head start on breaking the bubble that often develops in first year.
For me, coming from Vancouver, it gave me a chance to spend time with friends and family who already lived in Toronto and knew the city well. One of them took me to a drum circle, the likes of which I had never seen: hundreds of people gathered in a park in the middle of downtown Toronto, dancing to a beat you could hear from blocks away. It gave me an idea of the immense variety of things to do and see in this city, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to do such things had I come straight to school.
Through the rabbit hole
Sept. 3: Today was move-in day. After the initial “awkward lunch”—standing around for two hours meeting your fellow first-years and hearing the same questions over and over (“What’s your major? Where are you from?”), it was time to learn the requisite school cheers, glorifying ourselves and putting down everyone else. It’s curious how people always feel this need to distinguish themselves within a group, even as they dismiss it as just a fun tradition.
Dance, monkey, dance!
Balancing the circus of life with the meaning of life is very hard.
First, some Robertson Davies to justify my copious use of quotations: “God, youth is a terrible time! So much feeling and so little notion of how to handle it!”
Youth is indeed a time of turmoil, in many senses, which is why I think it’s justified that I invoke these little pieces of wisdom to help me though these uncertain times. Another quote then, this time from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, to describe this week’s turmoil: “When you have to attend to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality fades.”
A little context: Without much protest, I think most people would agree that having a sense of meaning and connection to something beyond yourself is really important in life. Whether this comes through good friends, a hobby, religion, family, or anything else that gives people a sense of purpose, this is what I understand Conrad’s “reality” to mean.
So what exactly is getting in the way of this reality? Well, this week and next are midterms. That involves a lot of work, which, given the choice, I probably would rather not do. It’s interesting stuff for the most part, and I enjoy the initial learning of it, the gaining of new knowledge and perspective, but studying it for 7 hours a day is a bit much. Jumping through these hoops in order to do well in school and come out with a degree is what I understand Conrad’s “mere incidents of the surface” to mean.
This kind of thinking really makes me want to drop out of school and move to Thailand to teach scuba diving, writing off the mere incidents of the surface in favor a soul-searching adventure in paradise, but I like to think I know better. Conventional wisdom would have me believe that by working hard to jump through the hoops now, I’ll be able to enjoy a much better lifestyle in the future than I would if I dropped out now and moved to the tropics. This argument doesn’t hold any water as long as my picture of the ideal life involves living on the beach, but I expect this yearning to subside, only to resurface with the next round of exams. I suppose this balancing act is something I’ll have to get used to, as I don’t expect life after graduation to be any less full of hoops to jump through.
Maybe conventional wisdom isn’t so wise after all…
Lament for the lament for the iGeneration
Are today’s students so tapped into Twitter and Facebook that they’re unteachable?
Ryerson professor, journalist and author Gregory Levey has written a “Lament for the iGeneration” for Toronto Life.
I found the article alarming, not because I share Levey’s dismal view of the ability of young people to communicate, but because I can’t believe that this crotchety old man is actually a year younger than I am (it’s Ben here).
He’s 31, and already he’s camped out on his rocking chair on the front porch, shaking his cane at passing skateboarders and complaining about how the younger generation is shiftless and the whole country is going to hell.
Naturally, I’m overstating my case, but I do find it disturbing that a professor now believes that “the fissure that currently exists between schools and students is unbridgeable.”
Unbridgeable? Completely impossible to bridge? So it’s time to give up?
Levey is so dismayed by students’ inability to write without including emoticons and text message acronyms such as “LOL”, and without citing Wikipedia as a source for academic papers, that he believes he is witnessing “the end of education”.
According to Levey, time spent online has rewired the brains of young people, who are now so used to instantaneously accessing information that they are no longer capable of remembering things, or of evaluating sources of information.
I don’t know about Levey, but I don’t remember all students being geniuses when I was an undergrad, way back in the olde days of the 1990s.
Levey admits to being addicted to his BlackBerry and to being a heavy Twitter and Facebook user, so perhaps his neural pathways have been rewired and it’s becoming difficult for him to remember his undergraduate years, or maybe he had substantially brighter and more earnest classmates than I did. Or maybe my own heavy internet use has polluted my brain with false memories.
I don’t remember anyone using internet acronyms in papers, but I do remember a classmate beginning an anthropology essay about Eric the Red with the Dick-and-Jane style lines, “Eric was a Viking. Eric was good.” I remember a couple of students who used to go to the pub to split a jug of beer immediately before writing final exams, to help themselves relax. And I remember a lot of academic papers written on the basis of some very un-academic sources.
Every generation complains about the generation that follows. It’s usually a case of nostalgia and of idealized memories of how things were in the olde days, back when the grass was greener and my knees didn’t ache so damn much.
Normally the nostalgia doesn’t kick in at 31, though.
I don’t doubt that there are unique challenges in teaching this generation, particularly for older professors who are unused to the deluge of insipidities our modern technological environment brings us. The job of educators is to teach students as they are, not to wait for students to become the perfect pupils that they were back in the 90s. If students are bad writers or if they lack the skills for critical analysis, educators must bridge the gap and teach the skills, rather than declare the students unteachable.
Levey has only been a university professor for three years and has only ever taught the iGeneration. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t remember how much worse students’ spelling was before we had computers. I’m sure in another ten years he’ll be nostalgic for this iGeneration he’s lamenting, and he’ll write a brand new lament about students with computer implants in their brains, or about how common it is for students to bring pocket-sized atomic weapons to class.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
Cramming? Download the answers
Online services provide textbook answers, notes, and exams. But is it cheating?
Instead of turning to classmates for help during all-night cram sessions before final exams, the New York Times is reporting that students are now just as likely to be turning towards commercial websites that provide step-by-step solutions to textbook questions, copies of previous exams, lecture notes and even real-time help with physics, math and computer programs.
Although many students now use these online services, with fun names like Cramster, Course Hero, Koofers and Sparknotes, some faculty are questioning whether or not these sites encourage cheating, and if students are falling prey to the intellectual equivalent of a get-rich-quick scheme.
One example is Course Hero, says the Times, a program into which students can type in a college name and course number to find the previous semester’s exam. The site hosts hundreds of thousands of textbook solutions, along with an offer to “leverage study materials” within study groups who are taking, or have already taken, a class.
Some (including professors) are jumping to defend the websites, saying that instructors should not be reusing exams, and that copied homework will eventually lead to a lower exam grade. Additionally, many of the documents have long been available through other means (either through the library, through frats or sororities, or from friends and acquaintances who already took the course.)
David A. Sachs, associate dean in the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University, who is part of an advisory panel for the popular Cramster service, says universities need to rethink their practices in light of the Internet.
“As faculty, we need to be better educated about what the possibilities are, and the truth is you can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” Dr. Sachs said. “If Cramster and all these companies disappeared tomorrow, you could still do a Google search and find what you’re looking for in five minutes.”
Cramster, which has been online since 2003, has about 500,000 registered users, many of whom visit the site specifically for solutions to math and science textbook problems. Solutions to odd-numbered problems are free, but students must pay $9.95 a month to see the even-numbered answers.
According to the Times, students can post queries to the site’s 3,000 “experts,” who are rated for quality (like eBay sellers) and earn “karma” points for rewards like laptops and iPods. An expert, according to Cramster’s CEO, could be a brilliant high school senior bound for M.I.T., a professor or a retired engineer. The company also has staff members who moderate the question-and-answer board.
“There’s no doubt our site can be abused,” says Hawkey. “Let’s say I have a take-home test. We had one incident where someone posted a question on our site that was the same one [as] on an exam.”
For the rest of the story, click here.
