How should i study effectively

You need to be in an environment with little to no distractions—an environment that will aid in keeping you focused on your assignments. Your university may have other places on campus that will provide you with a nice little studying spot.

While cafeterias may be quite busy, there are some university campus cafeterias that tend to have just enough silence for students to study while they grab a bite to eat. You might get campus fever and decide to venture outside of your university to get some work done.

Many students find little coffee shops with Wi-Fi that will let them sit there all day long for a buying customer. Outdoor parks and recreational centers, even the public library might be a nice change of scenery. Even study lighting is also important. If you want to preserve your eyesight and maximize your time and energy, then choose lighting that will not cause eye strain or fatigue so you can keep your study session effective at any time of the day.

Let people living with you know that when your door is closed, it means you do not want to be disturbed. Try not to respond to phone calls or texts, this will break your concentration and you will lose focus. No matter the size of your apartment or house, we recommend dedicating a little office space just for studying—away from any distractions. Avoid social media. Speaking of distractions, nothing can sap away your time for a good minutes like good old social media!

Emails used to be the necessary evil in order to keep life going, but now people are communicating through social media platforms more than email or even talking on the phone! The problem with this is the alerts! Distractions also include avoiding your phone.

The world can wait. If you are absolutely adamant about keeping your phone nearby in case of an emergency, then allow yourself some study breaks so that you can dedicate a certain amount of time just for checking your alerts and messages. Focus Booster is a mobile phone app that relies on the Pomodoro Technique, where you work intensively for 25 minutes and then you break for five minutes.

The app also includes productivity reports and revenue charts. College is hard work, and just like any other kind of job, you deserve a break. You MUST take care of yourself in order to give your academic career the attention it deserves. Running yourself into the ground without allowing time for your body and mind to rest is unacceptable. Unless you are a legal transcriptionist, transcribing lecture notes can make your notebook look like a 7-year-old scribbled in it!

The best way to do this is to transcribe the recorded lecture notes. Fact: it has been proven that information retention is higher when you go over your notes and repeat the lesson after the class is over. Rewriting your lecture notes is going to be one of the most brilliant study techniques to practice. Rewriting will help you remember the context better and reorganizing them in nice outline forces you to comprehend the lesson.

Have we mentioned that college is hard work? Finding fellow students who are struggling to understand the coursework can be comforting. Connecting is a vital part of learning. Studying using a highlighter helps you make connections visually, not just mentally. Also, you learn by doing- rewriting notes, creating drawings, diagrams, mental maps or study cards. Visualizing information that is difficult to describe concepts that build upon the understanding of one another will create a visual memory to recall during an exam.

Mnemonics can be acronyms, memorable phrases, images, spelling mnemonics, rhymes, etc. Knowing what type of exam it will be can also help. If it is multiple choice, you will probably need to work fast, know definitions, years, and concepts. On the other hand, essay type exams focus on overall understanding and connecting learned material, often through examples which you can also try to prepare in advance. It would be most effective to leave your device in another room. If you cannot limit the distractions then deleting the apps and reinstalling them later can also be an option.

Furthermore, there are apps like Antisocial, which can block social media for a scheduled period of time. Other apps such as Freedom or Off Time can block Internet altogether for a set time, both for phones and computers.

Declare your study time a Wi-Fi and gadget-free zone. One of the best places to study effectively is the library. Only whispers are tolerated and you will be asked to mute your phone. The atmosphere itself can highly motivate you. When you are surrounded by a lot of focused people who are there to learn, chances are you will want to be part of that movement.

Also, a good library will offer you all the resources to study, such as research tools, help with references or borrowing a book for your class. The library can become your quiet study oasis. However, if you chose to study at home make sure you limit all distractions parents, siblings, friends, internet, TV, phone, video games, etc.

Keep your study area clean because a clean space helps you think clearly and focus, and you will not be wasting time on finding your things. Also, it is advisable not to work from bed since the temptation to sleep especially if you are sleep deprived will be too appealing.

Instead, have a good, comfortable chair that promotes a healthy posture. Then you could answer more batches of questions, with each set dealing with just one shape. Or, you could figure out the volume of a cone, followed by a wedge. Next you might find the volume for a half-cone or a spheroid. Then you can mix them up some more. You might even mix in some practice on addition or division.

Rawson and others had groups of college students try each of those approaches. A year earlier, Sana and others showed that interleaving can help students with both strong and weak working memory.

Working memory lets you remember where you are in an activity, such as following a recipe. Pay attention to diagrams and graphs in your class materials, says Nebel. He and Dung Bui, then also at Washington University, had students listen to a lecture on car brakes and pumps. One group got diagrams and was told to add notes as needed to the diagrams. Another group got an outline for writing notes. The third group just took notes. The outlines helped students if they were otherwise good at building mental models of what they were reading.

But in these tests, they found, visual aids helped students across the board. Even goofy pictures might help. In one study back in , she and others gave cartoon drawings to college students along with information about five scientists who studied intelligence. For example, the text about Alfred Binet came with a drawing of a race car driver. The driver wore a bonnet to protect his brain.

Students who saw the drawings did better on a test than did those who got only the text information. Abstract concepts can be hard to understand. It tends to be far easier to form a mental image if you have a concrete example of something, Nebel says. For instance, sour foods usually taste that way because they contain an acid.

On its own, that concept might be hard to remember. Indeed, it helps to have at least two examples if you want to apply information to new situations. Nebel and others reviewed studies on this in July Their Journal of Food Science Education report describes how students can improve their study skills. Ask why things are a certain way. How did they come about? Why do they matter? Psychologists call this elaboration. Elaboration helps you combine new information with other things you know.

And it creates a bigger network in your brain of things that relate to one another, she says. That larger network makes it easier to learn and remember things. The strong man helped the woman. The brave man ran into the house.

And the students remembered a whole lot better when they had to answer questions about why each man did something. Make sure you can explain the material. Better yet, he says, see if you can explain it to someone else. Many students know they should space out study periods, quiz themselves and practice other good skills.

Often, they fail to plan ahead. Back when Rawson was a student, she used a paper calendar for her planning. She wrote in the date for each exam. Try to stick to a routine, too. Have a set time and place where you do schoolwork and studying. It may seem odd at first.

Allow yourself short breaks. Set a timer for 25 minutes or so, suggests Sana. Study during that time, with no distractions. When the timer goes off, take a five or 10 minute break.

Check your phone. Maybe drink some water — whatever. Afterward, set the timer again. Many students know what those skills are, they report. Even when students do make plans, something more enticing may come up. Studying has to become a priority, they say.