Effective Study Skills Strategies in Higher Education

This essay delves into the critical aspects of study skills essential for success in higher education. It begins by defining study skills and outlining various learning strategies, including mnemonic techniques, organization, association, and structural and generative strategies, highlighting their effectiveness in different learning styles. The essay then progresses to detail a comprehensive study plan, emphasizing the importance of setting both short-term and long-term goals, creating subject lists, prioritizing tasks, allocating study time, and incorporating academic activities for a balanced approach. The conclusion reinforces the significance of these strategies and plans in achieving academic and professional aspirations. The essay provides a valuable guide for students seeking to optimize their learning processes and achieve their educational objectives. This assignment, along with many others, is available on Desklib, a platform providing AI-based study tools for students to excel in their studies.

Study Skills for Higher
Education

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Discuss various strategies of learning that help individuals to learn best...................................1
Study plan to attain academic and professional success.............................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
The term study skills refers to the combination of skills that tackle the process of taking
and organizing new information, dealing with assessments and retaining new information. It
involves mnemonics that helps to support the retention of information, concentration techniques,
effective reading and efficient note taking (Hertzog and et.al, 2017). The Essay will outline
various strategies of learning, study plan that involves long and short term goals etc.
Discuss various strategies of learning that help individuals to learn best
Learning styles refers to the way in which learner absorbs, retain and comprehends
information. It is also defined as the understanding that every individual learn things in different
styles. They are very important because most individuals have own way to learn. Some have to
do it to learn, some have to observe every stage and few people learn best by listening (Fiorella
and Mayer, 2016).
The term learning strategy means the way of people to use specific set of skills to learn
the content or to complete other type of tasks more efficiently and effectively in non academic
settings as well as in school. There are various types of learning strategies that helps learner to
learn best. These are as follows-
Mnemonic strategies -
These strategies help students to memorize the terms and facts. There are various devices
that helps to remember important dates, vocabulary etc. Such as-
Dual coding: It includes the use of non-verbal codes like images. As per the principle of
connectionism, it helps to make easy for learners to access the details.
Organization -
Another way in which the strategies work is regarding development of consistent box to
put the details in. It helps learners to maintain all the related details together, instead of it being
divided apart (Cuevas, 2015). For Example – It is easy for students to remember various types of
words with the help of a sentence develop with the help of those words.
Association -
This strategy helps to develop strong relationship between various elements. It is very
meaningful strategy for learning. Strong interrelationship helps because when individual see
either one of the two things they will remember other one in easy manner.
Structural strategies -
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It stimulates learning in students by influencing them to mentally pick out specific
information and put it together in one structure. It includes techniques like outlines, conceptual
maps, flow charts etc. According to the research, those learners who uses these techniques tend
to more at higher levels. It also helps students to truly understand the details unlike superficial
and rote learning.
Generative strategies -
Another important element of learning is incorporating new details into existing level of
knowledge. According to E.Z. Rothkpof, these are various activities that helps individuals to
gain knowledge such as answer and ask questions or saying things out loud, underlining, taking
notes etc (Pritchard, 2017). It helps learners to gain deeper understanding because they force
them to learn new information. All the above learning strategies are very useful in the classroom.
Study plan to attain academic and professional success
In order to attain academic and professional success, student have to prepare an effective
study plan having following steps:-
Step 1:- Short and long term goals to study
Establish the respective goals that is both short and long term goals for studying. By
identifying these goals, students are able to make their focus over the areas that are important to
achieve. Students are require to set their short term goals like:- getting good score in weekly tests
or memorising few topics etc (Al-Barrak and Al-Razgan, 2016). For the achieving the same,
students have to divide the task into days and have to work on the same in order to achieve
academic success. Long term goals may include:- Getting scholarship, to get internship in a
known organization so that they can get success as a professional. For both the cases, students
have to make a proper schedule and work accordingly.
Step 2:- List the subjects that students need to study
Before getting to work, it is very important for the students to create their schedule and
make clear the respective topics that they need to study. Accordingly, they have to put efforts in
memorising the topics.
Step 3:- Students need to figure out, what they have to do for subject and exam
After making the list of subject, it is very important for the student to figure out the topics
that they need to cover and have to divide the respective time per subject so that course is
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compete on time without leaving any important topic. Students have to reserve their time for
reading and creating the respective exam study guide(Vanderford And et.al., 2018).
Step 4:- Prioritize your list
The best way to get prepare for the subjects is to prioritize the important topics and rank
them in order to devote maximum time on important topics. Students have to prepare a list and
rank them according to the priority.
Step 5:- Divide your available time into study blocks:-
The best way to prepare study schedule is to make an effective plan and memorize the
respective topics on daily bases according to the set time. A routine have to be there and shorter
time blocks are also easy to prepare than the longer blocks, so accordingly students have to
create these blocks with the available time(Gunawan and et.al., 2018).
Step 6:- Reserve time for academic activities also
It is very important for the students to have study plan that include academic activities, as
it is also important to make their mind relax as having a healthy balance between the academic
and personal life leads to academic and professional success of the students.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it is been concluded that the respective strategies of learning
usually help individuals to learn best and that leads to achieve its academic goals. Further the
report concluded that, in order to attain academic and professional success, students have to
prepare a study plan that also include its short term and long term goals.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Al-Barrak, M.A. and Al-Razgan, M., 2016. Predicting students final GPA using decision trees: a
case study. International Journal of Information and Education Technology. 6(7). p.528.
Cuevas, J., 2015. Is learning styles-based instruction effective? A comprehensive analysis of
recent research on learning styles. Theory and Research in Education. 13(3). pp.308-333.
Fiorella, L. and Mayer, R.E., 2016. Eight ways to promote generative learning. Educational
Psychology Review. 28(4). pp.717-741.
Gunawan, J. and et.al., 2018. Nursing students plan after graduation: A qualitative study. Journal
of education and health promotion, 7.
Hertzog, C., and et.al, 2017. Age differences in coupling of intraindividual variability in
mnemonic strategies and practice-related associative recall improvements. Psychology
and aging. 32(6). p.557.
Pritchard, A., 2017. Ways of learning: Learning theories for the classroom. Routledge.
Vanderford, N.L. And et.al., 2018. A cross-sectional study of the use and effectiveness of the
Individual Development Plan among doctoral students. F1000Research, 7.
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