Get involved; take chances; find your mentors; challenge yourself; be honest with yourself; push yourself; take care of yourself. Sleep. Put in what you want to get out. Ask when you have questions; if you need help, find it. Use the resources of the university.
- Some tips for success by Dr. H
- Read the syllabus – What we mean
- Important info.
- “If professors were brave enough to get forehead tattoos, just about every single one of us would choose to have “read the syllabus” emblazoned across our faces. But, I’m not sure that everyone knows exactly what we mean by read the syllabus. Are we just asking that students look over the syllabus at the beginning of the semester? No.”
- As instructors, we are happy to answer questions about the material and other specifics, however, answering questions about information that is clearly presented in the syllabus is draining and time consuming.
- For example, in a class of 300 people, if everyone sent questions that could easily be answered by looking at the syllabus this would be a huge time drain and would detract from being able to spend time on the course materials. Say it takes 5 min to read and respond to each email, multiple that by 300 and that is 25 hours of time each week just answering simple questions. Faculty would much prefer to put that time to use working with students, the material, and making the course a better experience.
- Tips from Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire, Ph.D.
- Are You Hitting Your Limit, or Getting Stronger? The Power of Reinterpreting Mental Effort: Link
- A growth mindset of self-regulation is a promising tool for enhanci9ng perseverance, particularly in contexts that require sustained effort
- The Impact of Faculty Attitudes About Intelligence – Feb 2019: Link
- Students have better educational outcomes in courses taught by those who have “growth mind-sets” than those who believe intelligence is fixed. For minority students, achievement gaps are cut in half.
- Research helps students excel on science exams: Link
- A new study released today reveals that helping lower-income high school freshman to regulate their test-taking anxiety can cut their biology course failure rates in half. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesand conducted by Barnard College President Sian Leah Beilock and her research team found that brief pre-exam de-stressing strategies could reduce the performance gap often seen between lower-income and higher income students.
- How metacognition, thinking about thinking, can help improve your life - 2017: Link
- Metacognition, thinking about how you think, has been shown to help students improve their grades. Stanford University researchers published a new study that outlines a 15-minute thinking hack that led to an average improvement of one third of a letter grade for the participants.
- 7 habits of the best self-directed learners - 2018: Link
- Take ownership of your learning
- Set SMART goals ( Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time-defined )
- Use 5-hr rule (1-hr per day specifically for learning)
- Practice active learning
- Use the 80/20 rule (80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your effort, maximize that 20%)
- Visit the library
- Find ways to motivate themselves intrinsically
- Students believe they are prepared for the workforce; employers disagree: Link
- What College Graduates Regret: Link
- An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep – Aug, 2018: Link
- What I learned by leaving my comfort zone – 2018: Link
- The Challenge of the First-Generation Student - May, 2015: Link
- Teaching the Skill of Learning to Learn – IHE 2019: Link
- College student hunger: How access to food can impact grades, mental health: Link
- Academic research shows that a substantial percentage of college students experience “food insecurity,” a lack of access to adequate amounts of food, especially healthy foods. The proportion appears to vary by institution type and among student groups, with racial and ethnic minorities being most likely to skip meals or go hungry. The research also suggests students who don’t have enough food are more likely to have low grades and poor health.
- Raider Red’s Food Pantry: Link
- Who can use Raider Red’s Food Pantry?
- Raider Red’s Food Pantry is available to all currently enrolled TTU students. No proof of income is necessary to visit the food pantry.
- Can This Man Change How Elite Colleges Treat Low-Income Students? – Feb 2019: Link
- Elite colleges not only fail to admit enough low-income students; they also fail to care for the ones they let in.
- Not Rich at {insert school here}: Link
- This is a general article discussing the trend of student-created resources for other students. U Michigan was the first, I believe, others have followed. As of Feb 2019, I don’t see a TTU version out there. But UT has one
- Link
- Not Rich at UM – Google Doc: Link to google doc
- NRP How to Succeed At College Podcast Collection – 2019: Link
- TTU First Generation Transition & Mentoring Program: Link
- The Unwritten Rules of College - Chronicle of Higher Ed 2015: Link
- Yes, your opinion can be wrong: Link
- Surviving Weed-Out Classes in Science May Be a State of Mind: Link
- 2020
- Social ties to classmates and how students feel could be more important than innate ability when it comes to enduring early STEM courses.
- Starting College this Fall? 10 Things a Professor Wants You to Know: Link
- Some Metacognitive Tips: File name
(Handouts_Box_TTU_teaching_learning_for_students.docx)Below is a list of things I send to students when they ask what they can do to “get a better grade” in my class. There is, unfortunately, no single, magic studying tip, trick, task, or hack that will work for everyone.
Thanks for reaching out for help and thanks for being invested in your course performance. We have lots of options for help in the course and I think we can figure out a way to assist you in better grasping the material. Some of the activities and assessments in this course are not meant to be easy and it is totally okay if you’re having trouble with them or with other aspects – working on application of material and practicing critical thinking is tough. It takes practice and time. Before I can offer suggestions, I need to ask you for some information. That way we can formulate a plan.
One thing I do tend to notice is that students try to memorize information (e.g., making quiz questions or flash cards out of the questions/material instead of thinking through it critically). In my experience, making and memorizing flash cards isn’t a great way to learn concepts and seems like that time could be better used on other study strategies. Flashcards can be helpful for learning basic vocabulary, but using them to memorize answers to quiz or homework questions isn’t a good use of time. Instead of making flashcards, I ask students if they can reason through the question and the answers to determine why the correct answer is correct and why the other answers are not correct. By playing with the material and figuring out how to apply it to those questions students can practice critical thinking. Lastly, if you do make flashcards, make sure that none of our class material (e.g., homework questions, answers, case study material) is posted online as this is a violation of our syllabus policy and will be submitted to Office of Student conduct.
A few questions:
- How, specifically, are you studying and preparing each week? What active steps do you take when watching lectures and doing the reading? As in what does that process look like for you? The more I know about how you study and prepare, the better suggestions I can make.
- The assignments in this course are created using the learning outcomes – have you been using those for your studying? If so, how?
- If you haven’t been doing all week components (Required Readings Folder; Relevance Folder; Assignment) before going to discussion, I highly recommend you start doing so. I have noticed that only about 1/3 of the class or so is doing the weekly assignment before attending discussion. The assignments can give you a check on your understanding. You can take those assignments multiple times, so it really is in your best interest to do them before discussion and then perhaps again after discussion.
- Some metacognition - In terms of the material – can you narrow down what aspects you are struggling with? Where, exactly is the confusion? For assignments, case studies, discussion quizzes, and the exam, have you gone back through the correct answers and your responses to determine why you missed the questions? This process can be very useful for learning and reflection, and can help students learn if they are working too fast, not reading the question carefully, or if they are missing basic factual questions or application questions. There is definitely a difference in missing a question due to a simple mistake (e.g., misreading, answering too fast) vs. missing a question due to not knowing or misunderstanding the underlying concept. This review and reflection process is great because it gives students a starting place for where to study.
- When going over your answers, try out the following: Prioritize and list learning targets as 1) my strengths, 2) what I need to review, and 3) my highest priority for studying. It can even be helpful to make a chart or table (either on paper or perhaps in Excel) and list learning topic/learning outcome/area and then if that area is a strength, a needs review, and/or is a high priority for studying (I do have a worksheet for this that I got from another educator - attached here).
- Have you watched the video about the study cycle and metacognitive thinking? If not, please give it a watch. If so, what aspects of that you can you apply to your studying?
- If you haven’t, I recommend checking out the Tips for Succeeding in College folder in the Digital Mentor section – that folder has lots of great info.
- There have been a few anxieties about points - Have you been tracking your grade with the grade calc sheet? If not, I recommend giving it try as doing so can be helpful as it puts point values into visual perspective and helps students feel more in control.
- If you want to look at a published paper about tips for student-driven exam reflection, check out this one: Gorres-Martens, B. K. (2020). Using exam reflections to augment learning. Advances in Physiology Education, 44(3), 501-504. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00028.2020