If you're a college student, it always seems like exams are the only thing standing between you and some long-awaited break, for example, spring break, or the year-end holiday break. Congrats if you were able to get an exemption for a couple of those exams, but for most of us, it's time to hit the books, the notes, and the PowerPoints to get ready to finish the semester like a superstar. Acing exams is not a feat reserved for the so-called greatest minds among us. With a few diligently applied learning strategies, mostly anyone can confidently get ready for their final exams.
Concept Learning
Conceptual understanding means having a unified and practical grasp of complex ideas. Students with conceptual understanding know more than isolated facts and techniques. They get why a mathematical or scientific idea is important and its applicable contexts of usefulness. They have organized their knowledge into a logical whole, thus learning new concepts by relating them to what they already know. Conceptual understanding also strengthens retention. Because facts and methods learned with understanding are connected, they are easier to remember and can be recalled for use when forgotten."
A general rule of thumb is "concepts before facts, understanding before memory." To oversimplify the difference, facts are memorized, whereas concepts are understood. Why are concepts important to know and to learn? By using concept learning in daily life, even outside of school and studies, you will see that applying the concept method to learning and developing new skills can help you derive new meaning and improve your performance.
Cooking is an easy example. Typically, learning a new recipe involves following a list of ingredients and a set of instructions. For example, if you are making a cake from scratch, you can repeat the recipe many times till you eventually know it by heart. However, understanding the point of each step is not something you will gather by just following the instructions. The instructions don't usually say why you thoroughly cream together the butter and sugar first or why the flour must be folded and not mixed in. However, understanding that creaming butter and sugar together adds pockets of air that aerate the batter, making it lighter and fluffier and that the more you whip it, the lighter the cake will be, or that folding the flour into the mixture traps extra air in the batter and breaks up existing air bubbles into smaller ones, whereas mixing too much will deflate the batter making the cake flat, gives you more insight on the process of your preparation.
` Most importantly, understanding those concepts makes it easier for you to recognize and use the techniques in other completely different recipes, even perhaps creating your own recipes based on your scientific and technical understanding of these basic concepts. You would be way ahead of a baker who is just memorizing recipes. You can learn the skills and steps to any task and perform it suitably a few times, but the key takeaway is that knowing the principles and ideas that link them together is more effective in preserving and retaining those facts and skills. When the time comes to learn something new, you may very well be able to frame that new knowledge with understandings that you've already nailed down.
Many everyday study habits and practice routines are actually counterproductive. Summarization, underlining, highlighting, and re-reading have been proven to be mostly ineffective. More complex and durable learning may be achieved by employing one or more of these six active techniques to understand challenging concepts and help you go deeper when learning or reviewing something more complex.
1. Learn How You Learn Best
Everyone learns somewhat differently. Everyone processes information uniquely, and we all have ideal inputs that help us soak up concepts faster. You may be a visual learner, and prefer to look at or create graphics. Or you may most enjoy listening to lectures or voiceover powerpoints Find out which method works best for you, and focus on it.
2. Make stimulating mental connections
Using acronyms and word associations can help you retain ideas, patterns, and concepts. Try using different pen colors and write notes on what you're learning in the margins. Many ebooks allow you to highlight and then group notes according to colors. Acronyms can help catch on to crucial concepts. For example, PEMDAS is the popular acronym used for the mathematical order of operations. But you can use a rhyme or acronym that only you understand because it's something associated with just you.
3. Elaborative Interrogation
This is the process of explaining concepts to yourself out loud and acting like Sherlock Holmes to understand what is involved in any concept. Why and how questions tend to work the best? You can do this with a study partner
4. Teach Others (The FeynmanTechnique)
Have you ever found a concept elusive to comprehend, but when asked to explain it you suddenly seem to 'get it'? That's not a coincidence. Teaching something to others necessitates a different way of processing and organizing ideas. This is also known as the Feynman Technique. It is the process of talking it out loud to yourself, an imaginary audience or a study partner, in simple terms, to discover what you know and what you don't know about the subject matter you are trying to learn. This way, you can find your blind spots and understand what you need to revisit.
5. Connecting it with what you already know
While studying, it is important to reflect on what you already know and try to form some connections with things you learned previously. Associating new models to our current knowledge is one of the most excellent methods to build a strong long-term memory in only a matter of hours, not months or years! When studying, take what you're learning and find a way to attach it to your existing understanding of the subject. If a sudden relation comes to mind, it's your brain trying to connect those dots. Go with the flow, see where it goes.
6. Write it out
Writing information down uses a different part of the brain than just reading. Instead of just scanning or reading to soak up knowledge, writing forces us to process it, organize it, and simplify it in our way. Try reflecting and then re-writing what you have read in your own words. Then revisit it and compare it to what you wrote to ensure you didn't miss any critical components.
So there you have it!
In essence, when you are journeying into areas of your study that seem difficult and unfamiliar, tell your brain that you are in learning mode. Establish a mindset that one of the main takeaways from your educational experience will be new knowledge and not just passing the class. If you reframe your expectations to make the learning just as important as the result, you will be well on our way to not just passing but mastering the material.
Juliet Pitter
IntegratedU