How to study for classes

This is only a guide on how to study for my lecture classes. The methods listed below may or may not be useful to every student, each of us are different and study/learn in different ways. What may work some students, may not work for others. These are Dr Hollier’s suggestions:

• For each hour of lecture class time you should be spending 3-4 hours of time studying at home.
• Before the material is covered in class, read the chapter summaries. This will familiarize you with the key parts of the chapter before they are covered in class, and will enable you to follow the class more easily.
• Print out and bring the fill in the blank lecture notes with you to class and fill in the blanks as we go through class. This will stop you just sitting there doing nothing and from writing down everything I say in class. It is strongly recommended instead of highlighting in the book, as writing the key words will help them sink in more easily than just highlighting them.
• Print out and use the fill in the blank lecture notes while watching the recorded lectures. This will stop you just sitting there doing nothing and from writing down everything. It is strongly recommended to use the fill-in-the-blank notes instead of highlighting in the book, as writing the key words will help them sink in more easily than just highlighting them.
• Recorded lectures are the equivalent of coming to class. When you come to an in-class session, you bring your pen and paper and take notes during the lecture. In-class sessions are specifically scheduled. When you watch the recorded lectures, you should be doing the same. Take notes and watch them at set times each week.
• While I understand that some students do not have much experience with online classes, most students are aware of the importance of going to class. In thinking about what has data supporting learning, there is a significant amount of data showing that students who go to in-class sessions do better on tests, and in the course, than students who do not go to in-class sessions. In line with that, utilizing the recorded lectures in conjunction with the fill-in-the-blank notes as an online equivalent of in-class sessions will increase your learning of the course material.
• Reading the transcripts only is not an equivalent to watching the recorded lectures in conjunction with utilizing the fill-in-the-blank notes. If all you do is read the transcript you are ignoring auditory and visual inputs that aid in learning. Having the material come through multiple senses at once has been demonstrated as a more effective way to learn something. Using only a single sense, such as reading alone, is significantly less effective for learning.
• Recorded lectures are intended to be used in conjunction with the fill-in-the-blank notes. To maximize your learning, you need to be completing the fill-in-the-blank notes with a pen or pencil (not typing into them). Typing on the computer has been shown to not help in learning. However, manually writing has been shown to improve learning.
• I specifically created the fill-in-the-blank notes with certain words missing that are important ones to pick up on. If you're not using them, I would definitely recommend that.
• When the chapter is completed, read the chapter cover to cover and fill in any blanks that you missed during class. It is very important you read the chapter cover to cover, as my tests and quizzes can come from any part of the chapter, whether I covered it in class or not. When reading the chapter, do NOT read the chapter all at once. The brain can only handle small amounts of information at a time, so read for 10-15 minutes (complete sub-sections), then take 2-3 minutes break where you do not think about the material, before moving on to the next part. This is very important. If you read the entire chapter straight through without breaks, you will most probably not learn anything, or only the very beginning of the chapter.
• After finishing reading the chapter, wait about 30 minutes and read the chapter summary again.
• Go to the mastering site and take the tutorials (if any are present), then the homework assignment. The tutorials will help you understand the key concepts for the topics they cover, and the homework will test you overall understanding of the chapter material. After completing the homework, re-read the parts of the chapter and lecture notes for the areas where you had problems in the homework (got the questions incorrect).
• If you are still unsure of the chapter, or specific parts of the chapter, grab two pens of different color and some paper (or a small notebook). Write a sub-chapter heading down on the page, then using one color write down what you remember about that topic in bullet point format on one half of the page. Then read the sub-chapter part and write down the bullet points summarizing it in the other color on the other half of the page (so the two parts in different colors are side by side). This will show you the difference between what you remember and what was covered in the section. Do this for all sections of the chapter or for the parts you are having problems with. Take breaks between each section. When the section/chapter is covered, read through the notes and see what the differences were. These notes will also be useful be useful to study from. The actual writing down of the information is one of the most useful/effective ways I have seen for students to actually learn and remember the material, however it is time consuming.
• Also make use of the study area in the mastering site. This will give other ways to study, such as mp3 tutorials that you can download to your mp3 player (playing these in the car is a way to learn the material by osmosis from hearing it over and over), more quizzes to take, animations to watch, pre-made flash cards (if you are a flash card person), and a lot more. This is an extremely valuable resource to help you learn, so make full use of it.
• Re-read through the lecture class notes or notes made above, and the chapter summary before taking the quiz online.
• Take the short quiz in iCollege. For the questions you get wrong, work out why you were wrong and what the correct answer is. By understanding your mistakes you will learn a lot. The point of this is not just to find the correct answer and memorize it, as that will ultimately get you know where, but to learn why you were wrong, and why the correct is the correct answer.
• If you have further questions after doing all of the above, come and see me during office hours and we can work through parts of the above together, or I can provide further explanations for the areas you are having trouble with.

MultiSelect questions and learning

• If you are doing well on the essay questions, but not as well as you want on the MultiSelect questions, then it suggests that you are generally understanding the material, but not taking in the specific details of the material. The MutliSelect parts of the tests are very much focused on specific details in the recorded lectures and/or text book. That is where I would suggest you devote more time. You may need to go over them more than once or twice.
• MultiSelect questions were created to test detailed knowledge, understanding, and application of the course content. The tests are generated from pools of questions that could come from any part of the content listed as being covered on that test.
• You cannot use process of elimination with MultiSelect questions as you do with Multiple Choice questions. MultiSelect questions thus prevent you from making “educated guesses” and test you on what you actually know.
• MultiSelect questions could have any number of correct answers. The best way to approach them is to view each answer as a true/false statement relative to what the question asks. View each answer independently from the other answers.
• The questions are written based on specific details, not overall concepts. If you study and generally understand the material, but cannot list / name specific examples, structures, functions,etc. then you have not learned sufficient details for these questions. These MultiSelect questions focus on details.
• The best way to learn the details of the course content is to utilize the fill-in-the-blank notes while watching the recorded lectures. Another option is the writing what you remember with two different color pens option listed above in the general learning information.

Paragraph / Essay questions and learning

• If you are doing well on the MultiSelect questions, but not the paragraph / essay questions, then it suggests that you are memorizing details but not necessarily understanding the bigger picture and/or able to reach higher Blooms taxonomy levels of the course content (application, analysis, synthesis, or evaluation levels).
• Paragraph / essay questions require you to apply what you have learned in new ways / to new examples, analyze information related to the concepts and work out how it is related or solve a problem, summarize the concepts with examples, and/or evaluate concepts for accuracy / comparison / implementation.
• The best way to approach these questions is to first identify what is specifically is being asked. Just writing what you know about something may not answer the question that was actually asked. The most common mistake I see is that students just write down what they know about the topic, but it doesn’t actually answer the question that was asked.
• These questions require critical thinking, which is very difficult to teach someone. It was how you think about something, not something you can necessarily read and memorize. However, if you do not have a good understanding of the concepts then you will struggle with these questions. So, the first thing to do is make sure you understand the concepts of the content that could be covered on the test first.
• A lot of the essay questions also require you to provide specific examples in your answer. A good way to learn examples is to write down headings, a brief summary of the concept as the first bullet point, and then examples as bullet points beneath. When listing the examples, try to explain why it is a good example and how it relates to the concept.