Study Tips

Historically, every day had a natural ebb and flow to it. People got up when the sun came up and worked early before it got too hot. Then they would eat and share family time as the sun waned and when it went down, they went to bed.  Then the light bulb got invented, and it’s been downhill for nature ever since.  After the light bulb was the car which took you places faster, the convenience store which stayed open all night, TV and movie marathons, and then the computer and the internet - a 24/7 system of light.  So unlike generations of my farmer ancestors, I get up around 10:00 AM, sometimes sleep in the afternoon, and then run around most of the day and go to sleep around 2 or 3 in the morning.  For people like me who are earning a college degree, there are definite advantages to studying online.

Taking a class online is perfect for anyone with a job in daytime hours because of the increased flexibility it offers. If you work in the day, you can come home and read your assignments at night, making sure to send your homework in by the deadline.  This main advantage to online college education has allowed many working people who would not have a change to pursue a degree the freedom to do so.

As internet technology has progressed the availability of dedicated web space and chat rooms has allowed students to work in groups, even if they live far away or have differing schedules.  Email and chat functions make it possible to share ideas, collaborate on projects and even study together from places all over the country.  Now people from all over the world can be in your class getting the same college degree. Online study can lead to better diversity and interaction between students.

I might have lost touch with the natural way to do things. But as someone who likes to get online at night and go to the gym in the afternoon, all I can say is, “Thank God for that light bulb!”

Not long ago I took an online Continuing Education Unit on technical writing from a college offering the six week course over the internet. I started out very well, but by the second week began to fall into “I’ll get to it later” syndrome. By the time I managed to get finished with email to friends and a few games of Bejeweled I would notice the lesson waiting on my account site was supposed to have been opened by yesterday. Not good. After a couple very apologetic emails, I learned that even though getting a college degree with online courses might be more flexible there are still requirements to be met. Everyone taking a course through the internet as part of the college degree should know how to study effectively online.

The best strategy is to make a class time for yourself. Even though it’s your time, there still should be some structure to the study habits. Pick a time each day to sign onto your account or class site and check email, look for assignments and communicate with the teachers. By having a “class time” you will be disciplined enough not to let too much time go by or miss something important. You never want to get so caught up in going about the other things in life you forget that you are in college.

Even though the bulk of your learning and activity will happen on your computer, you should treat this class like any other that you would take while getting a college degree. Buy a notebook or folder to keep all your materials or notes in. We learn better by writing so take notes of the things you see or hear onscreen, especially of you are listening to an audio-streamed lecture. Treat this lecture just as you would in a college class. Listen for detail and jot down any questions you may have.

cEffective online habits come through practice and perspective. You might be at home with a computer full of games and friends, but technically, you’re still in school.

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Like many others, I have cats in my house. To be more accurate, I am owned by cats who allow me to feed them and pay the mortgage so they can live here.  One of the best things about cats is the sleek and stunning way they get around. They can flip in the air, land on their paws and stretch their body as they lay in the sun so that their paws go one direction and their head goes the other.  That just looks like it feels so good. Of course the key to cats is the flexible spine which allows them to rotate in all kinds of directions with grace and poise.  Flexibility is the great advantage of online study when getting a college degree.  Don’t take that flexibility for granted, though. There is a big difference between a cat’s spine and boneless chicken.

Effective online study involves dedication to the process of the course over the scheduled time.  Many courses will list times or dates by which a chapter or online session must be completed. Keep a written calendar of those dates like a syllabus or set your online calendar to send you notices when those dates are due.  Even though lectures are there on the screen for you to read, print them out and highlight the parts that are most important, just like you would a textbook. The point isn’t just to check off the boxes and get through the class, the point is to learn from it.

No one gets a college degree in a vacuum and you will be expected to participate in online groups, chat sessions and emails sharing project objectives and completions.  Make sure to always follow the rules of group etiquette and behavior. The safety of being behind a computer keyboard can lead some to act in ways they generally wouldn’t. Avoid procrastination, especially in sections where group work is involved. Accountability is an important trait to learn when getting your degree.

Follow up and follow through and you will discover the flexibility of online study can be an effective and efficient way to get your degree and land on your own two feet.

Whether it’s an email to a friend talking about a trip I’ve taken or a lunch conversation with someone telling them about a book I’ve read, I like to talk a lot.  Like many other talkers, I have had to learn how to read the signs of polite communication, such as when their eyes glaze over and they start staring out the window, its time for me to stop talking.  The human brain can only hear so much and once it’s overloaded it will simply shut off.  That’s why one of the things you will learn in your college degree is the art of writing a case study. Case studies are small versions of reports, issues or analysis that are focused on one particular idea or incident. They are the very essence of condensed communication.

The Harvard Business School has developed a style for case studies that is generally accepted as an appropriate formula for writing a case study.  A case study involves the subject in the first paragraph then through a series of steps, depending how short the case study is meant to be, focus on the situation, the problem, proposed solutions, and conclusion.  Each step should be clearly delineated with subtitles that keep a reader’s interest and lead logically to the next step in the process. If a college degree does anything for you, it should make more logical and process oriented.

The other key to balancing a case study is to ensure you have a good solution to the original problem or case in question.  It’s easy to get focused on describing the situation and problem in order the fill the word requirement because you have a week solution.  However a case study isn’t a biography and people wanting writing that is college level are looking for answers. Balance out the development of your study so each part of the text has the same level of development and merit.

A case study is a fantastic short form document for situational analysis which reveals your thought process and ability to lead in settings requiring solution-based thought. In this case, like so many other things, the shorter the better.

I love packages, particularly when they come in brightly wrapped boxes with my name written on them. Those are the best kind.  We are a package culture. We like our groceries packaged in bags, our to-go meals packages in boxes and our records packaged in file folders.  Packages make things handier to find an easier to carry. They also gather together things so we can make more sense of them. While getting your college degree you will learn how to write a case study. In essence, you will be learning how to put thoughts into a package.

A case study is a concise analysis of a situation usually presented for review or action. Before a new business or enterprise gets started the initiator must first present a case study of the area and need or problem that business can solve.  The best way to begin a case study is to know the case fully and be able to look at it from all angles. One of the bonuses you get while pursuing a college degree is how to write with a certainly amount of objectivity. A case study is business, never personal.  After learning all there is to know about the case, divide the elements into categories to be placed in a package. The categories are a description of the case utilizing your research, the problem or need the analysis reveals, possible solutions to the problem, and you recommendations for the future.

You’ll notice people don’t like to carry around big, bulky, awkward packages. They want to carry small, balanced ones.  The same is true for your case study.  Although it should contain a lot of information, the overall design needs to be compact. Each sentence must carry an important message and led to the next one so it flows together as one process. Most case studies are around 500 words long unless assigned a particularly complex case.  Be clear and to the point with your case study so your readers can get the most out of the package you give them.         

When you’re in college getting your degree, most of the things you learn will not be taught in the classroom as a subject. They will be taught be developing the habits to make your assignments succeed. Packaging is one of those lessons and the world of business awaits those graduates who can do it well.

I’ll never forget my first college Literature class. I thought it would be like the classes I had in high school and early grades. I imagined there would be a few short stories collected in an anthology. So when I got the reading list full of individual novels from the college bookstore, I didn’t worry too much. I decided we would probably use a chapter or two for each. It seemed wasteful for me to buy a whole book for that, but I didn’t complain.  When the professor said on Monday, “On Friday we will discuss the first novel” I raised my hand like any good student and asked, “Which chapters?”  Boy did my world fall apart when he replied, “All of them.”  I realized to get my degree not only was I going to have to do a lot of reading, I was going to have to do it fast.  It was in that class that I learned the key to speed reading.

Speed reading for your degree course will be one of the most helpful things you can do.  It’s not a hard skill to pick up. It’s just a matter of training your eyes.  First, you must read by sight alone. If you have the habit of saying words softly as you read, you’ll have to learn not to do that. Speech takes more time than sight.  Your eyes should be able to recognize words as pictures and pick up their meaning very quickly.  The next technique is sight portion.  Don’t just look at each word and go to the next. Scan one sentence at a time and recognize the important words. You don’t need to pick up all the “ands, ifs or haves” just pick up the major words and thoughts in the sentence.

 The final technique involves eye sweep. When going across the page, your eyes will come to the end of the reading line. If you “sweep” your eyes back across the page to the next line, they will pick up stray words from all over the page and the message will become confused.  When reading for your college degree course, you will want to get thoughts, not jumbled messages you can’t remember.  Better is to learn that when you finish with one sentence your eyes will automatically start and at the beginning of the next line. This will keep the message clear and the process flowing.

Trained eyes know how to pick up word meanings automatically. As you learn to skip the surroundings and pick out important words then reduce your eye sweep so they become clear thoughts your reading speed will increase. There will be a time for lazy summer days looking at every word of a book for pleasure. You can read like that after you get your college degree.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people will say, “I don’t like to read.”  My first thought, that I am usually lucky enough to stop before it comes out of my mouth is, “then how did you get through college?”  College degrees are nothing but classes made of subjects made of reading.  Even the math classes involve some amount of text comprehension.  Reading for a degree course isn’t an option. It’s a requirement.  For each type of subject there are different types of reading that can be used.

College classes with high volumes of textual reading (from text books) can best be served by speed reading.  Speed reading is the art of controlling your eyes in such a way they pick up more of the content without spending time on the nuances of writing such as the articles or adverbs.  Speed reading trains you eyes to skim over material picking out important words and leaving the rest behind.  For history book chapters or long essays on philosophy, speed reading is best.

Critical reading is much slower. It takes every word, setting and phrase into account to make more meaning about the text being read.  Critical reading will be used in most of your upper division courses you take getting your degree. Classes involving poetry, case studies, statistics or analysis of any kind will likely require critical readings.

Comprehensive reading means you take in the whole text and use it to understand the whole of what you’re reading.  A comprehensive ready doesn’t get just the facts like a speed reader and doesn’t have to know all the why’s like a critical reader. A comprehensive reader just takes in all the material at face value and creates an understanding from it.  Classes where you read novels, theories or instructional documents are a good place for comprehensive reading.

In the in course of obtaining a full college degree, you will do many types of reading for different classes and when its all done and your diploma is framed on your wall, then you can go back to your life as you knew where reading was for pleasure and only something you wanted to do.