Building Blocks for Developing
Effective Study Habits
• Find a quiet, distraction-free environment in which to study. Turn off the TV set. Do not accept phone calls or texts. Make sure that others know that you need uninterrupted study time. Put up a “Do
Not Disturb” sign on your door if that helps.
• Avoid distractions. Each time the brain is distracted from the task at hand it takes approximately 10 minutes to completely refocus. This means each time you check your email, Facebook, texts, answer your phone, or watch TV, etc, it costs an extra 10 minutes in addition to the time the distraction itself took! One can easily double the amount of time it takes to complete an assignment or adequately study material by allowing distractions to be present!
• Music is a distraction! ALL studies conducted have shown music does not help one to learn! It simply distracts the brain to make tasks seem to go by faster, but the point of studying is to focus and learn, not to just get stuff done!
• Try not to study when you are hungry and/or tired, your body will be distracting itself by focusing on its own needs!

Building Blocks for Developing
Effective Study Habits
• Designate a specific area for studying in your distraction-free environment that has a large enough table or desk to lay out all of your needed materials.
• Stock your designated study area with all of the supplies that you may need: computer paper, pencils, pens, highlighters, note pads, notebook paper, stapler, ruler, calculator, dictionary, and thesaurus.
Have everything you need available at your space so you don’t waste time (and get distracted) locating the items you need.
• Make sure that your study area has a good chair, plenty of good light, and that the temperature of the room is comfortable. (Do not try to study on your bed! Your body has been conditioned that this is the place to sleep. You will be more alert and focused sitting upright at a table or desk.)
• Discover your key productivity periods for study. Some people work best in the morning, some in the afternoon, and others in the evenings. Try to study at the time of day the works best for you.
• Once you choose a time and place for studying, try to stick with it regularly. After a while your study schedule will become routine, and you will be more likely to stay with it.

Building Blocks for Developing
Effective Study Habits
• Consider studying your most difficult subjects first, when you are most alert and fresh.
• Organize a system so that you can determine how to prepare for longer term assignments, as well as short term assignments.
Consider taking a calendar and ripping out the months so that you can mount each month from left to right along one wall in your study area. Then you can write in exam dates marked in one color, project due dates marked in another color, etc. This can help you visually plan ahead and schedule time as appropriate for completing your tasks.
• Use your planner to record your weekly commitments and block out study time. Don’t over extend yourself. Your studies should come first. Choose your activities wisely do you don’t “burn out.”
• Use the notes you have made in your planner about what assignments are due and when exams are coming up to decide what you need to do most immediately for each course. Make
“To-Do” lists with study objectives for each day.

Building Blocks for Developing
Effective Study Habits
• Having a sense of the tasks you want to accomplish and what order to do them helps you stay focused, helps you not forget things, and will give you a sense of accomplishment as you cross things off your list.
• Making a “To-Do” list should only take you about 10 minutes and will save you countless time in figuring out what to do next as you go!
• Take breaks as needed to absorb new information and keep your mind focused.
• Get into the habit of reviewing your notes within 24 hours of taking them. Approximately 90% of new information is forgotten within 24 hours unless it is reviewed. Reviewing old info. immediately before new learning is to take place helps establish an inter-connectedness between the two and thus significantly improves retention.
• Reviewing notes within 24 hours of taking them helps move the information you are learning from your short-term to long-term memory. Rewrite your notes if they are particularly messy or disorganized. This will be a great review of the subject matter.

Building Blocks for Developing
Effective Study Habits
• Understand that studying is more than just doing homework assignments. When you study remember to:
– Take notes as you’re reading a chapter
– Study the tables and charts in the texts. They often contain important information that you need to know.
– Summarize what you have read in your own words.
– Make flashcards for quick reviews of dates, formulas, vocabulary words, etc.

• Students should spend approximately 30 minutes on each academic subject each night. Note: This does not mean you will always have 30 minutes of written homework to complete from each subject each night. It means you should be dedicating time to both the written work for that subject AND reviewing lecture/reading/class notes/study guides/quizzes, etc.
• This promotes learning and allows you to identify deficits in understanding so that you can seek help right away,
BEFORE you are overwhelmed from being too far behind!
• Take breaks. Usually a 5 min. break after each 30 min. session (each subject) is adequate.

• 30 minutes a night for 10 nights IS NOT the same as 5 hours focused on one subject in one night or even over a couple of nights.
• This study strategy is called cramming and while it feels like a lot of hard work (because it is) it WILL NOT produce the same results as doing a little bit of studying or working on a project each night.
• Cramming is exhausting and produces frustration because you’ll spend a lot of time on a class but your scores will not reflect it!

Practicing Retrieval is the Best Tool for Learning
Believe it or not, rereading the textbook has “little or no benefit” when you are studying for a test.
(Callender & McDaniel 2009).
Most students don’t realize this, because they have an “illusion of competence” (that is, you think you know the material better than you really do) when they re-read notes and textbooks
(Belluck 2011)
especially when re-reading passively instead of actively.

• A better method of study:
• Actively studying using the “read-recite-review” (“3R”) method: Read the text, set the text aside and recite out loud all that you can remember, and then read the text a second time.
• You learn better and remember more from repeated testing (from both in class quizzes and from self testing at home) than from repeated reading
(Karpicke 2009).
• (So when your instructor gives you lots of quizzes or tells you to memorize basic facts, don’t complain! That’s the best way to learn and to remember what you learn.)

• Make a study outline: Use your recopied class notes, together with your outlined text and notebook, to make an outline of the material.
Try to put as much as possible onto the front sides of only 1 or 2 sheets of paper and then do all your studying from these.
You can combine this outline with “flash cards”.

Make "Flash Cards"
• For any subject, you can make a set of "flash cards". But I suggest using regular 8 1/2" x 11" paper, not index cards. Divide each page in half, vertically. On the left, write a "question" that requires an
"answer", e.g., the name of a theorem, a term to be defined, the statement of a theorem, etc. On the right, write the answer, e.g., the statement of the theorem named on the left, the definition of the term on the left, the proof of the theorem stated on the left, etc.
• Then memorize the questions and answers — but do not simply recite them by heart. Instead, write down the answers: Cover the right-hand side (the answers) with a blank sheet of paper, and write down the answers. When you finish a page, check your work and repeat writing the answers to the questions you missed until you get them all correct.
• Why write, and not merely recite? One tends to skip details when reciting, especially if you recite silently to yourself, but if you write the answers and have a good memory, then, during an oral exam, you can "read" the answers with your mind's eye.)

• For subjects in which you will be expected to write essays, either "psych out" the teacher and make up some plausible essay questions, or get copies of old exams that have real essay questions on them. Then write sample essays .
Although the essay questions that you find or make up may not be the actual ones on your exam, you will probably find that much of what you wrote in your sample essays by way of preparation for the exam can be recycled for the actual exam. You will then be in the advantageous position during the exam of not having to create an essay answer from scratch but being able to merely recall the main ideas from a sample that you have already written as part of your studying.

• For subjects in which you will have to solve problems or write proofs, solve lots of sample problems from your text or from other texts
( Schaum's Outline Series ( McGraw-Hill ) books are usually quite good in this regard). How will you know if your answers are correct? The best way is to form a study group of 2 or more fellow students: Solve the same problems and compare answers. If your answers agree, they're probably correct; if not, go to your teacher and ask.

• Research has shown that the brain responds to color.
Consider using color coded highlighters when going over your notes. This can help you to remember based upon visual stimulation.
• Re-copy your notes. Some people remember well if they rewrite their notes.
• Read your notes aloud or tape record yourself reading your notes. The variety of ways you hear your notes may help you to remember the material.
• Use words association, imaging, or drawing ideas to help you remember key concepts.
• Break up the material into small portions and use note cards. Try to memorize just one note card at a time.