Many students struggle with their education due to poor study skills. They wait until the last minute to cram for an exam, when spaced repetition of the material at set intervals across a course is a much more effective learning method. Many will also just
College students prefer to use suboptimal learning strategies when they study (e.g., Rinella & Putnam, 2022), which can undermine their academic performance. That is especially true for first-year students, who have no experience studying for college-level classes. For these students, a poor academic performance may
Time management is one of the most important skills for success in higher education, especially in online classes that do not give students a set schedule for organizing their studies. For this reason, I have developed a time management program for online students that
Over the past few years, academia has focused more and more on helping students develop study skills to help them succeed. One limitation of these efforts is that they tend to take the form of workshops or resources that provide general study skill information.
First days of class are really fun. Or at least they can be. There is the energy of starting a new year and seeing a whole new cohort of students. There is the chance to unleash a new and improved pedagogy that reflects all the
While there has been considerable interest in cognitive science in education, limited numbers of educators are using this information to inform teaching and learning. That’s according to Weinstein et al. (2018), who identify six effective cognitive learning strategies: spaced or distributed practice, interleaving, retrieval practice,
Interleaving is the process of alternating between concepts during learning by periodically returning to earlier ones. Studies have shown that interleaving content promotes retention (Richland et al., 2005; Rohrer, 2012; Rohrer et al., 2015). Rohrer suggests that this is because interleaving helps students distinguish between
Students can learn from and with each other—that’s supported by multitudes of research and maybe in your own experience as well. The learning doesn’t happen automatically, and the group study doesn’t rule out the necessity of individual study. But study groups can improve exam scores
Most teachers already spend time regularly reviewing course content. What’s different with these approaches is that they get students doing the reviewing and they do so with activities that model evidence-based exam preparation strategies.
We know a lot about study strategies—how they can be used to improve exam performance and promote a deeper understanding of the material. We also know that many students are attempting to learn course content without particularly strong study skills. They procrastinate and have short
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