hi I'm dr. Steven Chu I'm a professor of
psychology here at Sanford university in
Birmingham Alabama this is the first in
a series of videos and how to study
effectively in college attending college
is a huge transition and the academic
challenge of college-level coursework is
a big part of it we made these videos to
help students make that transition the
information we helpful though to people
in almost any learning situation I'm a
cognitive psychologist which means I
study how people learn and think I'm
going to be explaining to you the basic
principles well people learn best now
you can use those principles to increase
the effectiveness of your study
I'm not peddling any quick fixes or
magic products that's going to make you
an A student overnight with little
effort such things don't exist the
bottom line is this if you use
ineffective or inefficient strategies
you can study long and hard and still
fail but if you use effective learning
strategies you can get the most learning
out of your study time in this first
video we'll examine your beliefs to see
how accurate and understanding you have
about how people learn all students base
their study behavior on their beliefs
about how they best learn do I need to
go to class do I need to read the
textbook how much do I have to study
material before I've mastered it the
more accurate your beliefs the more
effectively
you'll learn let's start with some
common misconceptions about how people
learn that I call beliefs that make you
stupid
if you hold these beliefs chances are
they're undermining your learning most
first year college students grossly
underestimate the time required to
complete assignments or study material
effectively I hear students say things
like don't you chew your gonna be proud
of me
I read eight chapters last night and
I'll think oh you didn't you skimmed
eight chapters but you learned virtually
nothing truly comprehending material
takes careful reading and more
importantly review always plan for
assignments take longer than you think
and always plan to have your reading
finished for an exam well enough in
advance to give yourself multiple days
for review a hallmark of students who
are struggling as they study by trying
to memorize isolated facts unfortunately
many texts
encourage this by putting key terms in
bold print and listing definitions in
the margins so students get note cards
right out the definitions and memorize
them the problem is a good teachers test
for comprehension how well you
understand the concept you simply don't
get that if you memorize isolated facts
many students believe that people are
naturally good or bad at a subject and
nothing can be done to change that but
academic success is much more a matter
of hard work than inborn talent students
say to me dr. cheer you don't understand
I'm really bad at math I tell them no
Tyler you can do it you just need to
really work hard at math you have to
commit the time and hard work necessary
to succeed now I recognize that people
have jobs and family and other
obligations but you have to recognize
that the time you have will limit your
likelihood of success but time and hard
work alone do not guarantee success a
lot of students believe they are good at
multitasking because they do it all the
time so they study while texting
checking social networks email and
having other distractions the problem is
that these students never compare their
performance while multitasking to the
performance when they focus on one task
without distraction the research
evidence is overwhelming that we are bad
at multitasking we're bad especially if
one of the tasks involves concentration
and effort like studying what we're good
at is fooling ourselves into believing
that we're good at multitasking because
all those distractions are more fun than
studying but in order to succeed you
need to reduce or even better eliminate
all those distractions for every
distraction you have you reduce the
amount you'll learn increase the time it
takes to understand the material and
increase the chance for a bad grade so
those are the beliefs that can sabotage
your learning now I want to introduce a
new concept that can have a huge impact
on your learning
it's called meta cognition meta
cognition refers to your awareness of
how well you truly understand a concept
accurate metacognition is one of the key
differences between successful and
struggling students weaker students are
grossly overconfident how well they
understand the material as a result
weaker students don't study as much as
they need to to truly understand the
material they take an exam there
confident they've done well then there's
stunned when they find out they've done
poorly let's see how this works a few
years ago in my general psychology class
I did the following at the end of the
first exam I had students estimate what
percentage of the questions they got
right from 0 to 100 percent I then
created this graph of everyone in the
class based on their actual exam
performance and how they estimated they
did each point represents a student if
students had an accurate view of how
well they knew the material and how well
they did on the exam their estimate
should match their actual performance
and they should score on the diagonal if
they did better than expected on the
exam their points will fall above the
diagonal if however they were
overconfident how they did their point
would fall below the diagonal look at
the results there are a few students who
scored above the diagonal and did better
than expected but most students scored
below the diagonal showing they thought
they scored better than they actually
did now look at the upper right-hand
corner of the graph these are the
students who did best on the exam notice
how most of these students are clustered
around the diagonal now look at the
middle of the graph here are the
students who did poorly and most of
their points are far below the diagonal
it was the weakest students who are the
most overconfident they had poor
metacognition after the exam I'll have
students who did poorly tell me I felt
so confident after the exam or I thought
I really knew the material these are all
signs of poor metacognition these
students were underprepared
overconfident and completely unaware of
those facts the problem for college
freshmen is they spent years honing
their sense of metacognition for high
school now they come to college and
their sense of metacognition is all
wrong a big transition in the freshman
year is developing a more accurate sense
of metacognition the problem with poor
metacognition is that it may indicate
that you have poor study strategies the
hallmark of a poor study strategy is
that builds overconfidence without
increasing actual learning so therefore
you have poor metacognition
in order to improve your study
effectiveness you need to improve your
study skills and that'll be the topic of
the next video