The Study Schedule/Learning Tips Thread

[The Grim Squeaker]

So, what are your tips or snippets of wisdom from experience for improving one's academic achievements?

The subject is a vast one, and what works for one person might not for another (visual vs memnonic strategies, memory based subjects (social sciences) vs exercise based fields (math, physics)), but I thought it'd be an interesting thread to start.
(The fact that i'm looking for ideas on how to organize my schedule over 8 days of study for 5 exams in different fields inspired it).


My initial contributions:

Memorization:
Try building up lists of basic phrases/terms (flashcard style, with the definition or answer on the other side of the page), but seperate the subjects so that the terms on each page have as little as possible to do with one another.
For example:

• Golgi apparatus
  Percentiles
  L'hopital's rule
  Digestive Openings in Cnidaria
  Orbitals in s,p,d,f =
  Polymerase which removes RNA primers
  Median number
  Parts involved in reaching & grasping

It's very helpful when the terms sound alot alike (Thalamus and Hypothalamus, Smooth vs Rough ER, Intraparietal region vs Parietal reach cortex, etc'). This technique makes it easier to avoid confusing the terms with each other if you have a "laundry list" of terms to memorize.

Active recall is Much, much, MUCH more effective than passive (just reading material).
Reading the material isn't anywhere nearly as likely to sink in as making notes and summarizing it. (My favoured technique is to go over books with a highlighter while reading them. Making summaries of certain subjects is best done after at least one read-through and after you understand the materials better).
Even saying what you read to yourself (out loud or in your head while in your bed) seems to help a lot. Some people can pay attention to things without something to help them focus on it (such as exercises or the aforementioned tricks), but i'm not one of them .


Cramming techniques -
Just Don't do it. Seriously.
(I'm also a firm believer in at least 6.75, preferably 7.5 hours of sleep in a night, even before exams. HW with a deadline is the exception to this ).


Study Schedules:
This varies immensely depending on the subject and person and curricullum.
Personally, I usually read the reading material (books) during the school year (and highlighting/marking it), as well as doing any provided HW. Then before exams I favour going over other people's summaries from classes/lectures, my notes in the books and practicing as many exams or exercises in the subject as I can to help me focus on the material and to find any "blind spots" I might not have noticed.
I have no idea if this is efficient, or how many hours a day work best, or whether it's better to focus on starting 7, 5 or 3 days in advance, etc'.


Exercise:
This is supposed to really help neurogenesis, and can certainly help some people calm down.
Again, unsure, untested, not sure if it helps or not, definetly unsure whether it's worth the time in the days before exams.


Taking the Test:
Find out where your exam will be. Go there at least a day before the exam, so that you know where it is.
Some people also find it very helpful to do "Simulations" of exams (meaning - take a print out of an exam from a previous year, go to the class where you'll be, and do the exam under realistic conditions - time limit, room of the test, no aids, etc'. I try to do this always, unless I've been in the class frequently before).
Make sure you have every tiny detail ready the night before, few things would suck as much as arriving and realizing you forgot your ID (there goes the course).
Dark chocolate is supposed to be quite good as a snack, anything which isn't hard to digest and that doesn't cause a short sugar high shouldn't be too bad.
(Trailmix, bananas, dark chocolate?). I'm usually too nervous to eat during the test, but it's best to have the option if you're allowed.
And make sure to bring water!
So, what else?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Research has proved that breaks and alterations in study routine just help you to lose focus.... Select days of the week to do particular courses' homework on, chase everyone away from you, lock the door to your room, put on a motivating playlist, turn off instant messengers on your computer, toss your books open around you, drink coffee at four hour intervals, keep hydrated with lots of water, and just spend twelve hours getting your homework done for that class for that week. Then do it for another class the next day, and so on, and so on. Be methodical, have all your resources around you and properly organized to get to, and remember that the more reps of any kind of problem you do, the better you're going to get. It's all a quantity game, the more you do something the better you get at it, so just keep doing problems, not just the assigned homework but homework similar to it, until your speed at completion is very fast, and you start to have the details of how that kind of problem is done memorized, since these can be generalized to other given figures for similar kinds of problems.

Though I agree that getting a full night's sleep is very necessary; for me, 7.5 hours minimum before tests to actually function. Also, don't spend the last 15 minutes before a test cramming, it will just overlay your short-term memory with desperate and irrelevant information disconnected from what else you've been studying. Take a deep breath. I pull out my hair brush and sit there with everything ready for the exam, and just brush my hair endlessly until it starts, sitting quietly. Whatever works for you, but studying until the last minute is an exercise in futility. When you've shown up in the classroom, you ain't learning anymore between then and when the TA arrives with the exams.

[madd0ct0r]

Got a link for that Research Duchess? - I'd always subscribed to the Study for Set periods and then take 5min to walk about, make a tea, whatever, so long as it isn't a computer screen and you leave your seat.
Heck, even at work when I was trapped in the 3pm-4pm slot I'd take 5min and sprint up and down the stairs or laps of the abandoned floor of offices.

Can't prove it helps memorization, but it does prevent you wasting too much time on a single question.

Although cramming 15min before an exam is bad, reading over, or even doing quickly a past exam paper a few hours before the exam can be good. If nothing else, past questions came up often enough for me that I got an instant 24% boost to the mark.

Study schedules are very good, if you leave time to relax and exercise - the exercise lets you burn off the adrenaline and keep functioning at a high level of stress for a longer time. Also reaching a point where you have done everything you need to do that day and can just kick back and open a beer is always a fantastic feeling - it's these little rewards that'll keep you going.

[Stark]

Know what's important and understand the fundamentals. If you have a solid understanding of fundamentals and know what is relevant to the exam (from tutorials, previous exams, hot tips etc) your study is more efficient.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Got a link for that Research Duchess? - I'd always subscribed to the Study for Set periods and then take 5min to walk about, make a tea, whatever, so long as it isn't a computer screen and you leave your seat.
Heck, even at work when I was trapped in the 3pm-4pm slot I'd take 5min and sprint up and down the stairs or laps of the abandoned floor of offices.

Can't prove it helps memorization, but it does prevent you wasting too much time on a single question.

Although cramming 15min before an exam is bad, reading over, or even doing quickly a past exam paper a few hours before the exam can be good. If nothing else, past questions came up often enough for me that I got an instant 24% boost to the mark.

Study schedules are very good, if you leave time to relax and exercise - the exercise lets you burn off the adrenaline and keep functioning at a high level of stress for a longer time. Also reaching a point where you have done everything you need to do that day and can just kick back and open a beer is always a fantastic feeling - it's these little rewards that'll keep you going.

The study is here, from Stanford, and some commentary is here.

During long days of rigorous work, we’re often overcome with the urge to stop and let our minds take a break. But how necessary are these breaks actually? They are only as necessary as you believe them to be according to a new study conducted by Stanford University. After running several experiments, researchers have concluded that people who consider their willpower to be unlimited are better at completing multiple tasks than people who feel their brains deserve periodic breaks.

Researchers recruited 60 college students to complete a lengthy survey. In order not to tip off the subjects to the experiment at hand, the psychologists buried questions about whether the subjects believed people were capable of pushing through strenuous periods of effort or needed to take a break to refuel. Afterward, the subjects completed consecutive mentally grueling tasks. Once the data was examined, researchers determined that the students who believed that the mind was strong enough to persevere performed much better at the subsequent tasks.

Next, the researchers wondered whether people’s perceptions toward willpower could be manipulated. Slightly altering the first study, the researchers recruited new students and gave them surveys packed with leading questions so that half the subjects were made to agree that “Working on a strenuous mental task can make you feel tired such that you need a break before accomplishing a new task,” while the other half was led to believe that “Working on a strenuous mental task can make you feel energized for further challenging activities.” The power of these suggestions was strong: on a series of tasks, the people who thought they could achieve once again outperformed the people who felt entitled to a mind break.

In order to triple check their findings and take this study out of a laboratory, researchers enlisted 100 additional students during a period of high anxiety: final exams week. Students self-monitored their activities and though all of them were busy, the students who believed their willpower was limited snacked, watched TV and napped significantly more than the students who thought their minds were up to the challenge.

These findings show that our brains do just fine at working hard for a sustained period of time, so long as we have a little faith. In the words of the researchers, “it is important that people understand that their own beliefs about willpower as a limited or unlimited resource can affect their self-regulation.” The next time you’re overwhelmed with work and feel too burned out to finish, just remember that that urge to procrastinate is all in your head.

[Broomstick]

I'm throwing this out as a new form of technology that might be of use to some people. It's called livescribe. It's a "smart pen" that allows you to record ambient sound while taking notes, then use your written notes to playback specific audio parts of a lecture or meeting. Some people are really raving about it, but, separating out the hype, the multi-sensory mode of writing/reading/listening may well help boost comprehension.

I'm thinking Grim might be interested, and also have the funds to purchase the system. (You have to use the special paper so the pen knows where it is on the paper when you write or play back information.) As I myself have never used one I can't recommend it, but it did strike me as an intriguing device for college students. And certainly some of our other college students may be interested. I was at Best Buy recently looking over the system, and it looks like you could get into this for $150-200 USD.

Which brings me back to some other, older technology - I used to record foreign language classes (French and Irish Gaelic) and play them back while doing my homework. There are some subjects where audio playback can be either a useful adjunct, just as important, or even more important than written notes. When in flight school, and afterwords when learning a new airplane, I used to take photographs of things like cockpit interiors, as well as aerial photos of airport layouts and other highly visual information to study at my leisure.

There has to be an appropriate fit between subject and learning mode, but audio recordings and photos may be extremely useful for some types of study. "Note-taking" is traditionally thought of as pen on paper but that's just one way to do it, there are others. Experiment a little and see what works for you.

One advantage of the 21st Century is that the technology to do these things is much smaller and more compact than it used to be.

[Korvan]

I've got a couple tips, not exactly about studying, but they could help improve your grade. 1st, get to know your Prof, take advantage of their office hours, get involved in class, anything so they Prof knows your name and feels positively about you. Determining your grades is part subjective as well as objective and having the benefit of the doubt can sometimes get you a better letter grade, or even make the difference between a pass/fail (in the later case its more about the Prof feeling pity for you rather than a positive feeling).

2nd, be smart about how you actually take your exams. A lot of people end up leaving marks behind because they spent too much time trying to answer a question that is stumping them. You got to be able to move on and quickly realize when a question is a lost cause (get as many part marks as you can). The best example of this that I've seen is some poor slob during a Biology midterm. The question was to say how many possible base pair combinations are possible. The guy spent the entire exam writing out each combination individually and ultimately ended up with the wrong answer. The kicker? The question was worth 2 marks out of 40.

At the start of the exam, quickly skim through it and get a feeling where the questions you know you can answer are. If you reach the end without finding any, don't panic, just pick one you know you can start at least and start mining those part marks. Keeping moving on to other questions when you've spent enough time. Think about how long you have and how many marks each question is worth to give you an idea how long to spend on each one.

Now, if you've paid attention in class, done the coursework, and studied effectively, then hopefully my tips won't be needed at all. But getting to know your Prof can still pay off in any case.