Quote:
Originally Posted by vp15
I was wondering how people study in university. So if you have time I would like you to answer the following questions, for I'd like to see what works for people. How do you study & take notes? Have you changed the way you study from the way you used to? What works well for you to study in general & to prepare for exams and such?
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For those of you that have yet to adopt a learning style:
http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp
You'll also figure out how you learn through experience during your university experience.
I'm a multimodel learner and I find that I can learn pretty well using all the different learning styles, auditory, read/write, kinesthetic and visual. I'm about equal in all of them according to VARK which I find makes sense. I use different learning styles for different courses (in first year, most of my courses are the same now).
Math: Read/Write and Kinesthetic
Physics: Auditory and Visual mainly, slightly Kinesthetic
Chemistry: Auditory and Visual mainly, slightly Kinesthetic
Biology: Read/Write and Visual mainly, slightly Auditory.
Doing stuff (Kinesthetic) is one of the best ways I like to learn. But it takes a lot of time. I can't do pages after pages of practice problems for each course but I can do some now and then.
Auditory was my main learning method in high school, I actually barely did anything else. It's the fastest way to learn for me since I just have to listen to my professor talk.
Read/Write is tied with Kinesthetic in the best way I learn. I can intake a lot of information and retain it by just reading. However this takes A LOT of time. I don't have time to read 5 chapters of each subject, sometimes even 7-8 chapters, each week. It's just physically impossible for me. That's why I don't do that much of it.
Visual I use almost for every class. I love charts and diagrams, they are so easy to understand and you can quickly go over TONS of information in 1 chart. It's even faster than Auditory.
Now you may be thinking that it must have taken me a long time to figure out these learning strategies for each course, but really it didn't take me very long. After a couple weeks you will be able to know how you learn best in each course. Some courses you'll be like "I hate coming to lecture, I never learn anything but I was reading the book yesterday and I learned so much". Other courses you'll be like "I tried reading the book yesterday and holy crap I don't understand jackshit in it. There are too many complicated words or there are too many numbers in a row!". You could also be like "These practice problems are too easy, I don't need to do them" or "These charts that the professor posted up are so confusing, there are so many arrows and boxes. I have no idea what is happening"
Anyways, that's mainly how I learn. Adapt to the courses and you'll do well.
My Advice: Spend your first few weeks trying out different learning strategies and see how you work best for each class. Also, just because you found a good strategy doesn't mean it'll stick. I change my strategies around all the time especially in first year. First year courses are so general that you learn many types different information through the class and as such you may be better at learning certain information a certain way than another.
Best of luck to you all, Cheers.