skip to: page content | skip to: freshman/sophomore campuses listings | navigation | UW Colleges & site information

UW Colleges Academics

Psychology

Links:

Increasing Your Effectiveness as a Student

A good place to begin is by cutting the problem down to size by effectively diagnosing the source of the difficulty. Ask yourself where the problem lies:

  1. Deficits in note-taking?
  2. Deficits in studying?
  3. Deficits in exam-taking (ineffective exam strategies)?

While you may experience difficulties in more than one area, this schema allows you to target, and work on, one area at a time. Let's examine each in turn.

Taking Notes

Note-taking in class serves two purposes:

  1. It keeps your attention appropriately focused on lecture material;
  2. It provides you with a database of accurate and relevant information for later study and exam preparation.

To ensure that objective (2) is being achieved, it's important to review your notes within 24 hours of each lecture to look for, and fill in, any gaps. This review can be brief, though it has the secondary purpose of beginning to transfer lecture material from your notebook to your memory (more about that later).

To fill in a gap, you have to first recognize that a gap exists. Here are some clues. Good notes should always include the following:

  1. Every new, unfamiliar, technical term should be underlined or highlighted (to facilitate easy skimming later) and should include:
    1. A definition -- simple enough for you to understand and to paraphrase in your own words;
    2. One or more specific, concrete examples, where appropriate, that illustrate the definition (since exam questions will often ask you either to generate an original example and/or to explain why a given example is correct or not)
    3. An indication, where appropriate, that the new term might be confused with other, similar-sounding terms with a different meaning (like respondent vs. response, or empirical vs. empiricist)
  2. Every bulleted or numbered list of items should include a heading/label that sufficiently explains what that list enumerates, why it is there or what it is for.
  3. Diagrams should be explained (so that it's obvious why the diagram is there, what it is intended to illustrate, how it is linked to your verbal notes).
  4. Lecture items that follow a specific structure (as outlined in lecture) should clearly replicate that structure in your notes. For instance, notes on experiments should include:
    1. The name of the experiment (and/or the experimenter/s);
    2. The purpose of the experiment;
    3. The basic research methodology used, including (where appropriate) the type of research design;
    4. Where appropriate, the hypothesized results (in advance of the actual study), especially when it is a "critical experiment" that is designed to distinguish between two alternative theories (make sure you see why each theory would make each prediction);
    5. A summary of the results or findings;
    6. A discussion of their theoretical significance.

In filling in gaps, don't just guess. Use my online lecture notes to help (it's a good idea to compare your notes to mine -- if your notes are good ones, you should see the parallels at once), but when in doubt, ask me. Don't ask a fellow classmate unless you're very sure about his or her competence as a note-taker -- shared ignorance can be fatal.

In going through your notes, use symbols to indicate key points of particular importance (*) and to indicate areas of likely confusion or uncertainty (?). You might ask me about the latter during office hours, via email, or during any in-class review sessions.

A good way to field-test the completeness of your notes is to try to teach a friend the information using only your notes as a reminder (to you) of what was said in class. If you can't do it (if you end up not remembering what I meant in class, or you can't answer your friend's questions), your notes are probably incomplete or inaccurate.

Studying

Besides the obvious (having a quiet place to study, minimizing distractions, and so forth), here are some keys to effective studying.

  1. Studying a little bit every day is much more effective than attempting to "cram" the day or two before an exam. There are many theoretical reasons for this, but one of the most obvious is the fact that most people can't stay in "active rehearsal mode" for too long -- in "cramming", you end up in ineffective maintenance rehearsal mode.
  2. Effective note-taking facilitates studying by making your notes easy to skim. You should easily be able to find the key points of the lecture (marked by *) and the important technical terms (underlined or highlighted) without having to search for them. Thus, you don't waste valuable time just trying to find what you need; you can spend your time learning that information.
  3. Stay in active rehearsal mode by asking yourself (and/or a study partner) such questions as:
    1. What does this term/concept mean? (Use your own words -- a plain-English paraphrase -- and NOT a formal definition you have simply memorized.)
    2. Give an example of this concept and explain why it is correct. (Give an example other than one already given in lecture.)
    3. Give an example of something that does not fit the concept or category (a counter-example) and explain why it does not fit or why it is incorrect.
    4. How does this theory differ from other, competing theories? How are two theories alike (comparison) and how are they different (contrast)?
    5. What is the purpose of this experiment?
    6. What would this theory predict about the results of this experiment, and why? Were the predictions confirmed or not? What does this imply?
  4. Minimize interference by making sure that you can distinguish between similar-sounding or easily confused pairs of terms (you might want to make a list of these).
  5. Maximize retrieval cues by practicing (the use of "flash cards" is one good way to do this). Make a list of key terms, then see if the term alone generates a memory of details associated with that term. Spend extra time on those for which you "draw a blank" in early trials.
  6. In situations that involve a specific, linear, step-by-step approach to problem-solving (such as the diagramming problems in unit 6), practice enough to memorize the sequence and to know which steps are likely to give you trouble.

Test-taking

Here are some general strategies.

  1. Arrive early so you don't unnecessarily add to your anxiety.
  2. Moderate test anxiety though effective self-talk (learn how to "talk yourself down" from an anxiety episode) and through breathing techniques (slow, regular breathing from the "gut" or belly).
  3. Spend the first 2-3 minutes of the exam in metacognition: skimming the entire exam to decide which parts of the exam to tackle in which order, to allocate time to each part (so you don't run out of time), to tentatively select which essay questions to answer, and to read the directions carefully. If you spend 7 minutes on each of 4 essays (= 28 minutes total), that leaves 22 minutes for 20 multiple choice questions, for instance.

In answering questions, if you get stuck, here are some things to try. This advice will be focused more on multiple-choice questions since that is where students seem to be struggling.

  1. Look first at the question (not the answers or responses) only. (Try covering the responses with your hand or with a blank note card.) Since 75% of the information in the responses is, of course, wrong, this helps you focus on what you already know. Try to generate an answer first (as if this were an essay question).
  2. For lengthy or complex questions, try underlining key words. (Note that for essays, it is very important to underline verbs that tell you what is required in your answer, so you don't miss half of a two-part question.)
  3. Look for ways to eliminate wrong answers first or to adopt a stepwise approach to questions (we'll look in detail at ways to do this in the review session). If you can eliminate one obviously wrong answer (or, better, two), you substantially up the odds of guessing the right answer.
  4. If stuck, begin by reviewing what you know. Remind yourself what each key word means, even if that doesn't make the right answer immediately obvious.
  5. If completely stuck, guess -- since your nonverbal right hemisphere may "know" and may be trying to tell you through a feeling or "hunch". (Never leave an item blank!)
    1. In situations like this, your first intuition is usually right (about 75% of the time).
    2. In situations like this, when you change your first answer to something else, unless you have a clear reason for doing so that you can put into words, making the change is usually wrong (about 75% of the time).
    3. Usually, I try to use equal numbers of a, b, c, d "right answers", so if absolutely stuck, see which letter you have used the least overall, or which letter has been neglected recently in your responses. (This is a last-ditch approach, but may occasionally work.)
  6. If stuck, skip a question (but mark it with a * so you don't forget to come back to it later) and go on. It can be a confidence-builder to begin with items you know well, saving harder items for later. This is also a good way to pace yourself so you don't run out of time.

For more information, click here and here.

Back to Main Page

skip to: page content | skip to: freshman/sophomore campuses listings | navigation | UW Colleges & site information