It is only the second day of class, but already several students have asked me for suggestions about how to improve their study techniques for this course. Interestingly, there was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that might help me make more useful suggestions about how to study more effectively.
Metacognition and Student Learning- http://chronicle.com/article/MetacognitionStudent/130327/
The article provides a link to what I think many of you will find to be a very useful website developed by Dr. Stephen Chew from Stamford University in Alabama entitled "How to Get the Most Out of Studying". Dr. Chew has prepared a series of 5 short (5 - 9 minute) videos designed to help students improve their study skills. I just watched all of the videos and I thought that they were excellent. Thus, I highly advise each of you to watch all 5 videos starting with the first and watching them in order through video #5.
http://www.samford.edu/how-to-study/
The main point of the videos is that successful learning requires "deep processing" of the information which for many of you will require new approaches to studying (many of you were probably able to get by with "shallow processing" in high school). The good news is that is is possible to learn deep processing. The bad news is that it requires effort and a willingness to try to learn to study in new ways. Dr. Chew suggests several strategies that you can start using immediately.
The article on metacognition also discusses things that teachers can do to help their students accurately assess their level of understanding of course material. They suggest that teachers frequently use "formative assessment" (i.e., assessments that are intended to provide students feedback on their level of understanding of the material rather than assessments designed to assign grades). Dr. Dini's use of clicker questions in class is an example of formative assessment.
I personally have not had a great deal of success using clicker-style questions, but many of my colleagues find them to be very effective. Instead, I prefer to allow you time to think and write about the material during class and to interact with the your fellow classmates to get a bit of feedback. Because time in class is limited, I imagine that I often cut these types of activities a bit short. In addition, I know that it is difficult for me to provide feedback to individual students when there are so many of you.
I still think that these in-class activities can be very valuable. I suggest that any time that I ask you to think about a questions or conduct an activity in class, that you spend out of class time thinking more deeply about the question. For example, if I ask you to write down a few sentences describing all of the information held in a particular graph, it is unlikely that you will have the "perfect answer" during the short time allotted to the activity in class. Thus, you should take time out of class to think about the answer, incorporating comments that your fellow classmates or I made during class.
How can you accurately assess your level of comprehension of the material. First, you can compare answers with other well-prepared classmates. Second, you can check with me or with Jeffrey the SI instructor. I suggest that everyone write out answers to the Expected Learning Outcomes for all of the lessons and readings. I am happy to review your answers to see if I think you have thoroughly addressed the concept in the a well organized manner. Feel free to send me your efforts so that I can provide feedback. Additionally, it might be useful to spend time in the Group Office Hours allowing students to provide feedback on their fellow students work.
Please feel free to add posts about study techniques that you have found to be useful and provide any suggestions about how I can help you learn the material more effectively.
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