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Welcome to part three of organizing and
prioritizing your studies. This third and

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final section will basically be
answering the question 'how to study' or

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'how to study most effectively'. When do
you think is the best time to study?

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Most people would suggest that you study early, sometime in the morning and

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afternoon, perhaps between classes, when you have time. The reason is you would not

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want to be studying late at night when you are more likely to be tired and less

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likely to learn the material. Then the
next question would be where should you

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study? Well, that could vary, but one thing
you definitely want to consider is

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studying in isolation. You don't have to study in isolation all the times because

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sometimes there could be study groups
that could be very beneficial and other

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group study activities, but a lot of
times, at least most the time, you're

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probably going to want to study in isolation. That way you're not distracted by other

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people and you can focus on learning the
course material. Now how long do you

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think you should study for at any given
time? The best answer is no more than 50

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minutes stretch of studying. Now why is
that? We're gonna click on this link and

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I'm going to show you this nice chart.
This is a great open-access textbook and

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here we have this nice chart that talks
about the effects of massed versus

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distributed practice on learning. 
Massed means this big session here,

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whereas these are more distributed. 
You'll notice here we have three

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different students. We have Leslie who
studies for a half hour, LeAnn who studies

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for one hour, and Nora who studies for
four hours. We also have their grades

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here.Who has the highest grade? Leslie
and that's because she's breaking up the

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tasks of studying into smaller tasks. Now a B is still a pretty good grade, so

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that's why we say no more than fifteen
minutes on our slide.

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You may want to consider studying for
smaller amounts of time and then taking

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a break. Some of that may be, as I
have heard, that we tend to remember the

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first and the last thing, so Leslie has
more first and last to remember than

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Leanne and Norah does; therefore, she
learns more of the material and is able

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to get a higher grade. Once you
study for 50 minutes then you should

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take a break. How long should your
breaks be?

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Usually 5 or 10 minutes is

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good. Of course if you have other things
that are scheduled on your calendar and

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task list you may end up doing it or having
a longer break sometimes. What should

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you do when you study? Well, the big thing is is you should pre-plan what you will

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do during study time. Usually when
we're talking about study time we're

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including reading, course assignments,
completing assignments, as well as doing

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review for quizzes and exams and
practicing recalling and retrieving

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information from your own memory.
We're gonna look at another chart to

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help understand why the studying and
review is important. Let me find the

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right one. For some reason it's not
showing up, so we won't be able to use

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this one. Let me bring another one up. Let
me just go to Google and bring up

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another - I didn't want the calendar -

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Here's another one that
illustrates the same purposes I want to

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show you. Once you learn something
you almost immediately

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start to forget what you learned.
If you're learning/reading chapter

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one and four weeks later you have to take
an exam you're not going to

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remember much of it, but if you review,
then you're going to remember more of it

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and forget less of it. Each one of
these different colors is a review

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session, so you see, if you

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review then you have forgotten less. You
review again, you've forgotten even less

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and you review more now you're going to
retain more of the information. That's

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why review is important because you need to battle this forgetting curve that

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just naturally occurs in humans. You
do that by studying and reviewing the

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course material, so you're forgetting
less of it and you'll have more learned,

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so you're ready to do that on the quiz
or exam. Some more study tips. These come

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from "How to Win at College: Surprising
Secrets for Success from the Country's

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Top Students" by Cal Newport which is
available in the library with another

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book of his as well. What Cal Newport
did, is he went to Harvard, and he

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interviewed lots of students - good
students - who were getting good grades,

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who were successful to figure out what
were they doing so he could then do it

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himself and be a successful student. 
He had found that students have a plan,

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which is what we just talked about on
the last slide as well, but those

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students plan out what, how, and how long, you know those chunks of time that

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they're going to study before they take
a break. He also finds that successful

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students would schedule free time and
friend time, but they would not do it in

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between classes and that's because they
didn't want to get distracted. They would

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use that time in between classes to
review work from class because, you can

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see, if you review something after
class you're going to remember more of

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it than if you waited to review. So
they're starting that review process

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early. They start studying in
weeks in advance. They don't wait until

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the night before an exam
to then study all the course material.

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They they do it in chunks throughout the
semester. Another thing students do is

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they find a productive study spaces.
Study spaces where they could study

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and learn and get assignments done.
They would usually study alone. Many

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of them would have secret study spaces,
because they didn't want friends to find

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them,
because they know it's easy for a friend

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to come along and say 'hey let's go grab
a coffee' and usually that sounds like

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more fun than studying in some cases.
They didn't want to be enticed, so they

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had secret spaces that they wouldn't
even tell their best friend about just

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so they can get their studying done.
Another thing that successful students

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did is they did coursework every day of
the week. Remember earlier when we looked

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at that block schedule and we had
nothing blocked out for study time on

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Friday, Saturday, or Sunday? A
successful student going to Harvard that

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Cal Newport may have interviewed 
said that they do coursework every day.

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They never take a day off. They do
something, maybe they don't do a lot, but

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they do something. Those students
there would also start big projects the

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day that they are assigned. You get an
essay that you have to write, you start

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something that night. You don't have to
have a full draft. Maybe they just

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brainstorm an outline or if you have a
big research project they might use

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one of those assignment calculators and
break those chunks down. They, at

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least, take the first step as soon as
they get started so they're not

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surprised when time gets away from them.

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They take those big assignments and they break it down into

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smaller tasks. If you had to write a
short paper, instead of doing it all in

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one day, they would do it in three. They might brainstorm an outline,

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then they would draft, and then they
would spend the next night revising it,

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and then they would be able to turn in a
good quality project. They had also set

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arbitrary deadlines. These aren't
deadlines that your teacher sets. These

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are deadlines that they give themselves.
Possibly to break up these big projects

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into smaller tasks or take three days
to write a short paper and they would

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make sure those deadlines they probably
write them in a calendar most likely to

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make sure that they're getting all of
those done. So that right there are a

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bunch of great study tips that will
hopefully help you. This is a list

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of our sources, so you would want to
click on just the Google slides to

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review and then you can click on these
and go to them as well as any other ones

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that you saw throughout the presentation.
I hope at this point, as a result of

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watching all three parts of Organizing
and Prioritizing Your Studies, that

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you hopefully are becoming more aware
of how you manage your time. That you're

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able to list some options for managing
time and study tasks. If you don't

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remember what those are, check out part 2 and to list the best amount of time to

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study before taking a break. That was in
part 3. If you're not sure what that is,

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you may want to review that now. If you
have any questions, please post to the

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discussion post in the Academic Success
canvas course. Find the module Organizing

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and Prioritizing Your Studies and you
can ask questions there as well as share

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what works well for you. When we do
this workshop in person students love

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hearing what other students do well and
it gives them ideas and allows them to

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talk and share. You don't have to
take the survey since you're online, but

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you may want to take the quiz to, again,
test your knowledge about what you've

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learned as a result of watching these
videos. Have a great day.