Revision techniques: The secret to exam revision success But what Cooke is talking about, he explains, is known in cognitive science as the difference between massed learning – when you learn and consolidate material in a short space of time – and spaced learning. “People who do massed learning will guess that they’ve learnt better than they have – it’s over-confidence,” he says. “If you drill a load of new vocabulary and then test yourself straight away, you’ll have the impression the memory is going to be there for ever.” This makes it dangerous for exam revision. Although packing in all your physics revision before Pancake Day might make you feel smug, it’s probably not a good idea. “I can memorise a shuffled pack of cards, but if I don’t test myself on them a few days later, I’ll have forgotten them entirely,” says Cooke. Of course, testing is little use if you can’t learn the facts in the first place – an accomplishment often easier said than done, particularly if you were never taught to in a meaningful way.
Academic writing: why no 'me' in PhD? | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional The PhD is a lonely pursuit. Ask anyone who has ever done one and they will tell you that there is a lot of "me time" during your years of research. It requires a lot of reading and writing, critical thinking, coming up with ideas, then throwing those ideas into the trash and coming up with new, and hopefully, better ones. There's no way around it, the process requires isolation. This was one of the first things our programme director told us during our induction seminar: to be able to do a PhD, you need to not only to be okay with being alone, you have to love it. You would imagine that with all this me time, all these academics living inside their brilliantly chaotic heads, having conversations with themselves (not in a crazy kind of way … or maybe just a little bit), academia would be more open to the expression of ideas and thoughts in the first person. Changing the way I write was not an easy task. What's my issue with this (aside from the irony)?
Improving Classroom Performance by Challenging Student Misconceptions About Learning In an overview of the preparedness of high school seniors for college level work, Kuh (2007) comes to conclusions familiar to many teachers. Most entering students are not adequately prepared either academically or in terms of study skills for college level work. This preparation is predictive of college success. For the past several years, I have addressed the entire entering class at my university on how to study effectively, in a presentation entitled How to Study Long and Hard and Still Fail… Or How to Get the Most Out of Your Studying. The basic thesis for the presentation is the following. It obviously is not possible to cover all the relevant concepts in a single 45 minute presentation. In the presentation, I start with the following list of “Beliefs about Learning that Make You Stupid:” Dweck (2002) demonstrated that students who believe ability is inborn tend not to work hard or persevere; they seek to avoid failure rather than work for success. References Chew, S.L. (2005).
Five secrets to revising that can boost your grades How do you get the most out of your revision time, and end up with the best grades you can? Or, if you're a different sort of student, how can you get the same grades you're getting now, but spend less time revising? Either way, you need to know how to learn better. And fortunately, decades of research carried out by psychologists about learning and memory has produced some clear advice on doing just that. As an experimental psychologist, I am especially interested in learning. Wouldn't it be better, I thought, if we could study learning by looking at a skill people are practising anyway? Computer games provide a great way to study learning: they are something people spend many hours practising, and they automatically record every action people take as they practise. Using data from a simple online game, my colleague Mike Dewar and I could analyse how more than 850,000 people learned to play. So here are my five evidence-based tips on how to learn: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
How not to write a PhD thesis In this guide, Tara Brabazon gives her top ten tips for doctoral failure My teaching break between Christmas and the university’s snowy reopening in January followed in the footsteps of Goldilocks and the three bears. I examined three PhDs: one was too big; one was too small; one was just right. Put another way, one was as close to a fail as I have ever examined; one passed but required rewriting to strengthen the argument; and the last reminded me why it is such a pleasure to be an academic. Concurrently, I have been shepherding three of my PhD students through the final two months to submission. There is a reason why supervisors are pedantic. Being a PhD supervisor is stressful. Another examiner enjoyed a thesis on “cult” but wondered why there were no references to Madonna, grading it as requiring major corrections so that Madonna references could be inserted throughout the script. Then there are the “let’s talk about something important – let’s talk about me” examiners. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Best, Worst Learning Tips: Flash Cards Are Good, Highlighting Is Bad In a world as fast-changing and full of information as our own, every one of us — from schoolchildren to college students to working adults — needs to know how to learn well. Yet evidence suggests that most of us don’t use the learning techniques that science has proved most effective. Worse, research finds that learning strategies we do commonly employ, like rereading and highlighting, are among the least effective. (MORE: How to Use Technology to Make You Smarter) The scientific literature evaluating these techniques stretches back decades and across thousands of articles. It’s far too extensive and complex for the average parent, teacher or employer to sift through. The WorstHighlighting and underlining led the authors’ list of ineffective learning strategies. The BestIn contrast to familiar practices like highlighting and rereading, the learning strategies with the most evidence to support them aren’t well known outside the psych lab.
BBC Radio 1 - BBC Advice - Revision Basics Innovating Pedagogy 2013 | Open University Innovations Report #2 This series of help sheets is designed for people who are trying out distance and online education for the first time, and for teachers who have already taught at a distance and want to try something new. Each help sheet outlines one approach to learning at a distance and provides guidance on how to put this into practice. All the help sheets are based on approaches covered in past Innovating Pedagogy reports and take into account that students may have only limited access to technology and the Internet. The latest report in our annual series explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. Download Innovating Pedagogy 2020 This eighth report, produced in collaboration with the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL), Dublin City University, Ireland, proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education in their current form.
Study Skills: Engagement and Retrieval | Think for Yourself This post acts as an introduction to the webpage betterteaching.ie/studyskills and is also the first link on that page. It also complements a previous post on the same topic: Misconceptions about how students learn – otherwise known as How to Study Hard and Still Fail. Why might this post help make me be a better teacher? Teaching students how to study more effectively at home should be a normal part of every teacher’s job description (but isn’t). The benefit of developing a student’s study skills is self-evident.Many of the these skills also relate to how a student learns best in the classroom and so should form an intrinsic part of your teaching methodology. Key Points Students don’t know how to study because nobody has ever shown them. The fact that students don’t know how to study may come as a shock, but when you think about it it shouldn’t. So what constitutes ineffective study? Whaaaaaat? So what constitutes effective study? Now you have to go back and check the answers. Like this:
The science of revision: nine ways pupils can revise for exams more effectively | Teacher Network The weeks and months leading up to exams can be challenging for students (and parents and teachers alike). Now more than ever, young people seem to be feeling the pressure. So how can students revise better? Which techniques really work, and which don’t? What can students do to improve their memory, mood and concentration? Before you do any revision 1. 2. During revision sessions 3. 4. Leading researchers in the field of memory consider testing yourself as one of the most effective ways to improve your ability to recall information (pdf). 5. 6. 8. 9. As research into psychology continues to develop, we learn more and more about how best to help students learn.
JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Volume 10, No. 1 (March 2014) Incoporating a special section on "Massive Open Online Courses" Volume 9, No. 4 (December 2013) Volume 9, No. 3 (September 2013) Volume 9, No. 2 (June 2013) Special issue on "Massive Open Online Courses" Volume 9, No. 1 (March 2013) Volume 8, No. 4 (December 2012) Volume 8, No. 3 (September 2012) Volume 8, No. 2 (June 2012) Volume 8, No. 1 (March 2012) Volume 7, No. 4 (December 2011) Volume 7, No. 3 (September 2011) Volume 7, No. 2 (June 2011) Volume 7, No. 1 (March 2011) Volume 6, No. 4 (December 2010) Volume 6, No. 3 (September 2010) Volume 6, No. 2 (June 2010) Volume 6, No. 1 (March 2010) Volume 5, No. 4 (December 2009) Volume 5, No. 3 (September 2009) Volume 5, No. 2 (June 2009) Incoporating a special section on "Integrity and Identity Authentication in Online Education" Volume 5, No. 1 (March 2009) Volume 4, No. 4 (December 2008) Volume 4, No. 3 (September 2008) Volume 4, No. 2 (June 2008) Special Issue on "Next Generation Learning/Course Management Systems"
Managing exam stress | Current Students | University of St Andrews You are here: University » Current Students » Advice and support » Personal matters » Managing exam stress Quicklinks:General exam stress-busting tipsTips for the revision periodTips for the exam itselfAfter the examA few anxiety reduction techniques Exam Stress Exam anxiety is: excessive worry about upcoming examsfear of being evaluatedapprehension about the consequencesexperienced by many normal studentsnot mysterious or difficult to understandmanageable by following a plan of helpful suggestions Four main areas which can contribute to your exam anxiety are: Lifestyle issues:- inadequate restpoor nutritiontoo many stimulantsinsufficient exercisenot scheduling available timenot prioritising commitments Information needs:- strategies for exam-takingacademic information such as course requirements, lecturers' expectations, exam dates and exam locationknowledge of how to apply anxiety reduction techniques while studying before any exam Poor Studying Styles:- Psychological Factors:- Plan. Smile!
SMIRK jQuery Mobile Web App Start page SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on a work at Advice to revise 7 hours a day for GCSEs over Easter 'unbelievable' | Education An expert recommendation that GCSE and A-level students should study for seven hours a day throughout the Easter holidays has been greeted with a variety of scepticism, concern and mild horror by psychologists, teachers and pupils. Barnaby Lenon, a former headteacher of Harrow, the prestigious independent boarding school that educated the likes of Winston Churchill, Benedict Cumberbatch, the singer James Blunt and the rugby player Billy Vunipola, suggests in a much discussed list of revision tips, a total of 100 hours study over the fortnight long holiday. All topics should be revised at least three times before the exam; studies should start at 9am and finish by 6pm with regular 30-minute breaks and a good night’s sleep at the end. “Good exam results are made in the Easter holidays,” he writes in a blog for the Independent Schools Council, which he chairs. “Public exam results are important. “It’s just nonsensical. Lenon, however, has an impressive track record. Since you’re here …