Hi, everyone.
Hopefully, you know that you have your first exam coming up,
and I thought I would address here, in a short video, how you might study.
Because one of the most common (if not the most common) non-content-related questions
that I get from my online students
is how to approach studying for course exams.
So let's just take a step back here and talk about exams.
So in terms of the grading for the course, one thing you might want to know
is that there's kind of a blend of both what you might call
"low-stakes" work and "high-stakes" work.
So by" low-stakes," I mean there are some graded elements of the course,
where basically, if you do a reasonably good job,
you get full credit.
so the reflection assignments and the application assignments
are examples of that.
But there also are high-stakes elements,
and the most notable example are the exams.
The exams are the tough part, you might say,
and exams are worth over half the points for the course.
They take -- they tend to separate out the students who really know their stuff,
who really understand the details of what we're covering in this course
from those who kind of know the gist of it
or really haven't worked very hard.
So definitely, the exams require work.
And so, to help you for the first exam, I've prepared a handout that goes through
kind of what to focus on and gives a couple of example questions.
I'll also give you a handout for the final exam
because there's so much to kind of think about for the final exam;
and that will include the essays that you will submit.
But I'll be honest.
So, when I went to college, I never got a study guide,
and I know a lot of you want a study guide,
but I don't know if that's typically what's done in college.
I think it's expected that college students
learn the skill of determining
what is most important to focus on in their studying and then to study well.
So that's kind of what I want to talk about here.
How to create your own study guide, how to figure out what to focus on,
and how to study to do as best as possible on the exams.
Honestly, if you wanted a study guide for this course,
I have a colleague that prepares a study guide for his version of introduction of psychology,
and I think it's like 30 or 40 pages long; it's ridiculous.
And the reason is, because this is a 4-credit survey course,
and I don't know if you're familiar with that, but this is not a 3-credit course.
It's a 4-credit course, meaning that if you took the course on campus,
you'd be meeting 4 hours a week during a normal Fall or Spring semester.
And about 8 credits per week
if you took the 7-week version of the summer course.
And so, that's where the designation of a 4-credit course comes from.
It's more work, it's more intensive, it requires more time.
And then the old adage is,
you spend that amount of time in class and then you double that
for the amount of time you spend outside of class
to kind of do all the work necessary to do well in the course,
so you can do the math.
There's a lot of time that's potentially necessary to get through everything
and prepare well for these exams.
And I think a lot of students don't kind of appreciate that
when they take the course online.
If you were taking the course face-to-face,
you would be having that much time every week in class
and then you have all that additional time outside of class to do homework .
And online, it's the same kind of expectation that you would spend about that amount of time.
So as a survey course, the goal of this course, in some ways,
is to introduce you to the entire field of psychology,
which is a tall task, kind of an absurd task.
But that's one of the goals,
is to introduce you to a lot of different things,
to give you a breadth of exposure.
Now that makes studying really tricky
because you're exposed to so much in this course.
Now, I'll be honest...
Of all the people who teach this course at Normandale,
I emphasize breadth the least.
I assign the least reading.
I assign you a textbook that's actually called an "Essentials Textbook,"
which means it's a shortened version of the full text.
And I don't assign about a third of the Essentials text.
I have some colleagues who actually think I'm not doing a good job
by not having you read more,
by not exposing you to more breadth,
but that's something I've chosen to do
because I try to emphasize depth a little bit more.
But still, having said that, there's a lot of information
there's a lot of reading in this course, and so,
one of the great challenges is figuring out what to prioritize in your studying
So part of the difficulty of the exams is that this is a survey course,
and in some ways, you are randomly tested on concepts
from everything that you are being exposed to,
and that's to kind of see how much of that breadth you're learning.
So one of the (I think) recommendations
that follows that is, you have to spend enough time in this course
to really expose yourself to all of that material.
You need to read everything in depth, in detail,
and you need to do all the other elements of the course that I'll mention in a minute.
And then you have to learn from that enough
to be able to recognize it in multiple-choice questions.
So when you're looking through your textbook,
there's a skill involved in really
gaining as much knowledge as possible from a textbook,
and when you go through this textbook, there are some hopefully helpful features.
So as you go through, note the bolded terms,
note the major ideas, pay attention to the figures and the tables
because they kind of are highlighting what's most important.
And then there are "test yourself" kinds of questions
sprinkled throughout the chapters.
And there are also questions at the end of the chapters,
and I would absolutely do those.
The answers are provided and they provide a way to kind of
check yourself to see whether you're learning from the text
as much as you might be expected to learn from the text.
Now, I will say, those questions in the text are more detailed, more specific,
more kind of nitpicky than my questions on my exams,
but they're still helpful to kind of practice and to kind of check and see
whether you're getting from the text what you need.
Now, when you're going through the text, especially,
I would absolutely take your time, read it deeply, read it in detail.
I would be in an environment where you're not distracted.
I would remove distractions such as your phone and things like that.
Put it away, put it in a different room,
and really focus on what you're reading and take notes.
You can take notes in outline form.
A lot of students really benefit by taking visual notes.
They take out like a big piece of paper
and they produce diagrams where they highlight the most important bolded terms
and the interconnections among those bolded terms from, like for example, every chapter.
But I would do something like that because you don't, in the end --
For example, before an exam,
you don't want to have to go back through and reread it all.
That's a waste of your time (if you had read it once)
to go back and reread it again.
You want to read it once and take notes so that then,
before the exam, you can use those notes to study
rather than going back through everything.
You might have to go back through
and cover some details that maybe you're a little bit more foggy on,
but you want to use your notes.
Now, like I said, I tend to emphasize depth over breadth, and so as a result,
I do assign -- maybe not, maybe it doesn't feel that way --
but I do assign less reading from your text
and I supplement that in a variety of ways with other articles.
I write my own reflections on what material means to me.
There are videos and podcasts that you're assigned,
and then I produce material.
In the Announcements section,
I write about material, I produce my own videos about material sometimes.
I produce my own podcasts about material sometimes.
And so, that's an attempt
to kind of emphasize what is most important in the course.
So in this supplemental non-textbook material,
pay attention to where everything is kind of focused,
and, in particular,
anything I produce is my attempt, as the instructor,
to show you what is most important,
what will be emphasized on the exams.
Now one of the great mistakes that students make --
and this is kind of the traditional way of studying -- is [that] they will study
mostly what's in the textbook and they'll go back and they'll reread
the textbook over and over as a way to prepare for the exam.
Actually, in the material that you're learning about from memory this term,
one of the points that's made
is that that's a really ineffective and inefficient way of studying.
And so, just in terms of memory, it doesn't work too well to do that.
So what I want you to do is,
I want you to focus most of your studying on what I produce.
So any time I write a reflection,
any time I write in the Announcements about content,
any time I make a video or a podcast,
any time I produce practice handouts
where there are problems that I'm giving you with the answers provided...
Because I'm the instructor,
I'm trying to show you through that what will be emphasized on the exams,
and I would start studying by mastering that, anything I produce.
And that's the way to get, I think, the most difficult material studied,
and it's the way to kind of be most effective and efficient.
Now, like I said, it is a survey course, so those are not the only questions.
The questions are not only based on what I produced,
but I'm trying to help you focus on
what's most important in what I produce,
and then you have to kind of get a sense for everything else
through the major themes, through the bolded terms,
things like that, of your textbook, alright?
So the "test yourself" concept
that you're learning about in this course in relation to memory in particular,
I think is really helpful.
Rather than trying to go back and repeat material and reread material --
which, generally speaking,
research has shown is not a very effective study strategy --
see if you can test yourself
and in particular, since I'm saying most questions come from or
are kind of related to or mentioned in things I produce,
look at that very carefully and see if you can come up with questions
that check whether you understand that material.
So like, when I was a student, for instance, what I did was,
I would take my notebook and I would go through,
and any time a term was mentioned, I would cover the term up and
I would ask myself what the meaning of the term was.
And so, the first time I'd go through the material,
I wouldn't really know it very well,
but then I would look at it until I kind of got it,
and go through all of the material in that fashion.
And what I'm saying here is,
you could do that with anything that I emphasize
and the bolded terms of Meyers.
Go through all of that once
and check and see whether you understand it,
come up with your own examples during that time
or some examples that connect what you're learning about to something else.
That'll help you to really remember it better.
And then go through it a second time like that.
Usually, when I did this, it took me three times,
and by the end of the third time, I kind of had it and I had it mastered
and then I would do well in the exams.
But if I did it once, you know,
I wouldn't do very well because I didn't know it.
And so, when you get to the multiple-choice questions on the exams,
they are an attempt to determine who really has the material mastered
from those who just kind of have the gist of it.
And so, you want to be someone who has mastered the details,
and to do that, you have to spend time with the details,
trying to learn the definitions, trying to understand the applications.
Now, because this is an online course,
of course, you have the potential to have material in front of you during the exams.
You have a limited amount of time
and the reason is because I don't want you to look up everything;
I want this to be a test.
I want to see what you know,
and I want you to prepare for the exam
just like you would prepare for an exam that was face to face,
where you had no access to any material.
You need to prepare, but the way I would prepare would be a little bit different.
I would have my notes, I would have things organized
I'd have my textbook, I would know where things are,
and then, when you did the exam,
go through and answer the questions that you know pretty well,
and click the answer and save it.
And then go back to the questions you're less certain of
and be aware of the time,
and spend that time wisely
to look up as much as you can to answer those questions.
Now, the multiple-choice questions for the exams in this course
are not necessarily straightforward definition questions.
You have to be able to understand
and apply and think critically about that material.
That's why you have to prepare for the exams to be able to do that, so --
But still, it's helpful to have that material in front of you;
and then, when you get to those more difficult questions,
take some time and try to think it through.
One of the common mistakes students often make in psychology courses is,
they will refer back to what they kind of have always known
or what seems common sense, what seems right,
and because psychology tends to oftentimes show
that what seems true isn't true,
I would kind of encourage you
to pause and not always necessarily go with that hunch.
Think about what you're learning about in the research in this course
and go with that answer.
And now you have to know the research well enough to do that.
A good sign is, if you're going through the multiple-choice questions and
you think to yourself: "Well, I see the first one and I see the second one
and I can see how someone would pick one of those two if they hadn't really studied,
but I know based upon my reading and what we've been discussing
that it's actually the third one."
If you can understand where students might go astray during the exam
and why they're wrong, then you know you're prepared.
So you want to get yourself to that point
and it does take time, it does take detailed attention.
So I am here to help you and I've given you materials that I hope will help you.
The practice materials, the things that I have produced, are all meant to help you.
Don't skip over my videos and podcasts and writings because, like I said,
that's where I'm really trying to point you in the direction of what's emphasized.
But if you need help, please contact me.
My contact information is at the top right of D2L
and we can talk it through and I can help you study
and I can maybe give you some suggestions.
So good luck, and I hope it goes well.
And never hesitate to reach out if I can do anything for you to help. END