Sad
I gave a second exam last Friday and I’m back to meeting with all of the students who earned D’s and F’s. *sigh* It is hard, because it is difficult to know what they need to do differently to study effectively. My latest idea is to have them write questions on a blank sheet of paper as they go through their notes. Then when they are done with their notes, to try to set their notes aside and answer the questions. If they answer the questions on a new sheet of paper, then they can use that list of questions to prepare for the exam.
I don’t know what else to suggest.
I had a student in tears in my office the other day. It was hard.
Do any of you have study methods that work particularly well?
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 6:15 am and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Squirl says:
I don’t have any suggestions. That one sounded good to me. This would be a very hard part of being an instructor. You can’t let people get by with not knowing the subject matter, but it’s hard to deal with their emotions.
Good luck!
Jenski says:
I remember being at a teaching one-day workshop and talking about “types of learners”. Now, I’m not trained as a teach and I actually get irritated with all of the lingo that really just means, “think about what you’re doing”, but they had good useful tips.
The one example I remember is a professor talking to an athlete about how he spent his time and ultimately, this athlete gets restless when he sat for too long (makes sense). So the professor recommended that the student essentially pace in his room while he read his notes and studied and it helped a lot.
So I guess if you can get a sense of where a student is comfortable and where they do their studying and see if it matches up. That would be a place to start too.
Jenski says:
P.S. Sorry for all the grammatical mistakes in that. That’ll teach me for not proofreading before I post! I should really pick a verb tense.
danielle says:
Ah, this does happen to be an athlete. Perhaps I should suggest he pace. It would be something to see. But maybe it will work for him. Thanks!
Ern says:
Woah, I haven’t been by for awhile because I wasn’t getting any new posts on the rss feed. I love the new site design!
For me, when I’m studying I have to write things down. If it’s something I have to memorize, I will write it out as many as a dozen times. Making my own notes and study questions in colored pens helps too – it helps me picture the answer when I’m in the test. But it very much depends on the student’s learning style.