Too many students make the common mistake of not making and keeping notes when they are studying. Instead, they expect to read the textbook and commit all information to memory. While this method might work in many classes, the science, technology, mathematics, and engineering courses have entirely too much information to hold simply through reading. For success in these classes, you must learn the information and then review it regularly to solidify your knowledge.
How a Study Guide Can Help
Study guides are the perfect way for students to keep track of pertinent information needed to study for tests and to use as a later reference. Here is how a study guide can help you in your more technical courses:
- Forces thought and comprehension – Many times, simply reading through a text will become automatic. When this happens, your eyes are looking at the words and part of your brain may be reading, but a larger part of your mind tends to wander on to other things. If your reading is automatic, you are not truly comprehending the information and you won’t retain it well. In the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) classes, you have to think through every concept until you have a complete understanding. Instead of simply reading through your text, read a section at a time, think about what you just read, and put it in your notebook in your own words. This process is very similar to that of teaching a concept to someone else. For even better results, add drawings, diagrams, and examples to help clarify the material when you look back on it later.
- Reduces frustration – In more complex classes, it is not uncommon to feel overwhelmed and frustrated when you try to learn through reading the text alone. At times, it may even seem impossible to learn the subject you are studying. This is because you are pressuring yourself to learn every aspect of the material simply through reading and memorization. The problem with this approach is that people generally only remember about 1/10 of what they read. Alternatively, people tend to remember around 95% of what they teach to others. When you document your material in your own words, you are in essence ‘teaching’ yourself the material and will have a much higher rate of retention.
- Creates a valuable reference source – Once you have used your study guide notebook to think the concepts through, you can then use it as a quick reference when you need to refresh your memory on a topic. This is an especially useful source of information because you have written and illustrated the material in a way that makes sense to you. So, instead of trying to translate someone else’s words, you are simply reviewing the concepts in a way that suits your learning style. This great study guide will also be available for later problem solving and for solidifying concepts that you will need long after graduation when you are working in your chosen career.