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Organizing/Prioritizing Studies Part 3: How to Study

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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.
Title:
Organizing/Prioritizing Studies Part 3: How to Study
Duration:
09:45

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