Now we’ll look at strategies that you can apply to help you learn and understand the work better. There are many many different techniques you can use to help you remember the material, but basically you need to find the best way to manipulate that material in order for it to stay in your head.

PART 2 – STRATEGIES FOR BETTER LEARNING

When you are learning something new, you are building a connection in your brain. The more senses you use, the stronger the connection will be. So if you are sitting in a lecture listening to what the lecturer is saying take in his visual cues too, don’t just sit there listening and staring at a piece of paper, you will be more involved in what he is saying and more inclined to remember it if you watch.

When you are working on your own, you maybe using colour on your page, but talk out loud to yourself while you are doing it, or work with friends. Teach each other the subjects – have fun with it, you are much more likely to remember the material if there was a good joke about it with your friends!

Obviously it is a bit hard to taste, smell or touch your work, unless it was a practical element, but have some fun with sight and hearing the work.

When you are in the lecture, don’t take down everything that the teacher says. Listen, digest and question what you are being told, try to make links with other information you have stored away in your head, even if it just to confirm what you are being told. When you cross link memories like this it makes it much easier to access them again next time. You could also record the lecture on a dictaphone so you can listen to it again later and make more comprehensive notes from it. But make sure you ask permission from your lecturer if you want to do that – most won’t have a problem with it, but it is polite to get their permission.

Keep going over the material. There is a saying that goes something like – “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. This is very true of memories, each time you go over a piece of work, you reinforce the memory connection, and as I said before, confirm why something might be true with knowledge you have already. Cross linking memories will make it harder for you to lose those connections.

An important point to raise is about taking an active role in your education. I have always felt that vocabulary associated with school and higher education is a bit too passive. You are educated – this implies something is being done to you; you have no choice in the matter. When you study something, you are doing the studying; you are taking the initiative to learn something. Students who are passive learners will never get top grades. Take responsibility for your education – it is up to you to get good grades.

Place faith in your intelligence, everybody is capable of a lot more than they think they are. Learning is hard for everyone, but some take up the challenge of learning something new, others don’t – make sure you are one of those who do take up the challenge!

Don’t get frustrated with a subject if you find it hard, frustration is an inhibitor of creativity and you ability to remember things. If you do find yourself getting frustrated, stop what you are doing and phone a friend to talk about it, or go for a walk to clear your head. When you go back to it, something may have fallen into place and you are able to proceed.

As I have said before, there are many ways of learning, from mind-maps to audio learning – there is information on it all out there. Ask you tutor if they have a technique that works. I had a teacher in school who said that he has a little picture or symbol in the corner of the page of each page of notes he wrote. He then related all the information on the page to that symbol. So when he wanted to remember something he knew was attached to a certain symbol, he would flip through his pages of notes in his head until he go to the page he was after and would then read the information he needed. Of course I think he had a photographic memory, so it was easy for him, but ask around – some one will tell you of a good technique that will work for you!

I could sit and go through every learning technique ever invented, but then I would have enough material to write a book and you would just get bored! So I am going to set that as your task for today:

TASK: Do a search on “revision techniques” or “learning techniques” and put together a document of about 5 techniques that you can try when you start learning. You may find very quickly that one or two of them just do not work for you, in which case drop them. If you get through all of them and none have helped, talk to a tutor or do another search and find another five techniques.

Remember, part of becoming a great student is learning to identify where your strengths and weaknesses are, and working on those weaknesses to make yourself a better student.

SUMMARY
Use multiple senses.
Stay in the moment – if you are in a lecture, focus on the lecture, not what you are having for tea.
Take an active role in your education
Place faith in your intelligence
Identify and utilize your particular learning preferences.

Next we will be looking at the top secret tool of all top students…

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