Study Skills for Higher Education: A Comprehensive Report

This report delves into the significance of study skills for higher education students, emphasizing their role in achieving long-term academic and professional goals. It explores various learning styles, including visual, auditory, read/write, and kinesthetic, highlighting their benefits in enhancing self-confidence, understanding strengths and weaknesses, and reducing learning-related stress. The report also examines effective learning strategies to improve memory retention and understanding, such as using multiple formats, focusing attention, organizing materials, and utilizing mnemonic devices. Furthermore, it provides guidance on creating study plans with both short-term and long-term goals, outlining steps to establish goals, list subjects, prioritize tasks, and allocate study time effectively. The report concludes by stressing the importance of a well-structured study plan to achieve academic success.

Study Skills for Higher
Education

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
A. Learning styles and the way they allow students to learn better............................................1
B. Study plan with short term and long term goals to attain academic and professional success
.....................................................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Study skills are very important for every student for their higher education(Truong,
2016). It is very important for the students to focus on these skills in order to reach their long
term academic and professional goals. Report will include different Learning styles and the way
they allow students to learn better. Report will also include a study plan with short term and long
term goals in order to attain academic and professional success.
MAIN BODY
A. Learning styles and the way they allow students to learn better
Learning styles:-
From learning styles it is been understood that every student is having its own capability
to learn and it is the preferential way in which these individuals absorbs or retain different
information. Every student is having its own way to understand the things and they learn the
things differently(Balakrishnan and Gan, 2016). There are different learning styles that students
can use in order to access different information. These learning styles are visual learning,
Auditory learning, Read and write learning and Kinesthetic learning. The visual learner take help
of mage, maps or graphs in order to understand the new information. On the other hand,
Auditory learners usually learn new things by listening and speaking to a situation. Students also
learn new things by reading and writing techniques and there are many students who are
Kinesthetic learners and use tactile representations of information that by figuring things out by
hand.
The benefits of learning style:-
These learning styles are benefiting the students personally as they are able to increase
their self confidence and self image. Students understand how they have to use their brain in an
effective manner. They can understand their respective strengths and weakness in order to
enhance the strength and to overcome the weaknesses(Terry, 2017). Students also get benefits
academically as these learning styles reduces the stress and frustration of learning experience.
However, these learning styles create problem if a student does not feel comfortable to learn with
the help of text and speech as visual aids are not allowed in some cases. Auditory learning style
also become difficult as many times students have to take use of library where they have to read
silently.
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Learning strategies and techniques that may improve memory retention and
understanding of how people learn:-
There are different strategies that leads to improvement in memory retention and students
can learn more effectively. Students have to be directed in multiple formats that is both visual
and verbal format of learning. Not only this they have to focus their attention in order to have
long termed memory(Costa and Lowery, 2016). They have to start learning on regular bases and
have to avoid cramming. It is also important to organise the learning material by grouping the
similar concepts and terms together. Using Mnemonic devices can also help the students to retain
their memory for long period. They can visualize the information that they study and can pay
extra attention to difficult information.
B. Study plan with short term and long term goals to attain academic and professional success
Short term and long term goals to attain academic and professional success:-
It is very important to define the short term and long term goals in order to attain the
academic and professional success. The short term goals of the students must be to pass the
weekly or term tests or memorizing some topics within 10 days. For these short term goals,
students have to break down there tasks and work accordingly(York, Gibson and Rankin, 2015).
The long term goals of the business have to be higher goals that students have to work on. These
goals can be related to winning a scholarship or to attain highest marks. For the same students
can put efforts by breaking down their goals in weeks and months as it will more manageable for
them.
Plan to achieve these goals and design a study plan:-
These respective goals of the students that is both short term and long term goals can be
achieved by having an effective study plan in hand. The respective study plan includes following
steps:-
 Establish short term and long term goals of students for studying:- It becomes easy for
the students to create their schedule if they are aware about their respective short term
and long term academic and professional goals.
 List the subjects that are in need to be study out:- It is very important for the students to
list the subjects or topics that may help them to reach the goals. This helps them to set a
right direction in order to reach their goals(Chanamarn and Tamee, 2017).
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 Figure out what students need to do for each subject:- Students have to build a clear idea
what they need to figure out in order to make the learning effective. For the same
students have to review the sections and have to reserve time for reading and
understanding the topics.
 Prioritize your list:- It is also important for the student to prioritize the list that is what is
more important to learn and devote the maximum time for that only.
 Divide the study time into study blocks:- The best trick is to create study at the decided
time and have it in routine. Students have to create blocks for the available time and the
best trick is to create reverse calendar instead of scheduling weekly time table(Al-Barrak
and Al-Razgan, 2016).
 Reserve time for non-academic activities:- It is also important for the student to reserve
their time for non-academic activities as it helps in creating positive health and mind
between personal and academic life of the student.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it is been concluded that every student is having its own capability
to learn new things and retain it for long period. Further report concluded that these learning
styles are benefiting the students in certain ways that is beneficial to them if used effectively.
Report also concluded that the different learning strategies helps the students to retain different
things for long period. Finally, report concluded that it is very important for students to have a
study plan in order to achieve their short term and long term academic goals.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Truong, H.M., 2016. Integrating learning styles and adaptive e-learning system: Current
developments, problems and opportunities. Computers in human behavior. 55. pp.1185-
1193.
Balakrishnan, V. and Gan, C.L., 2016. Students’ learning styles and their effects on the use of
social media technology for learning. Telematics and Informatics. 33(3). pp.808-821.
Terry, W.S., 2017. Learning and memory: Basic principles, processes, and procedures.
Routledge.
Costa, A. and Lowery, L.F., 2016. Techniques for teaching thinking. Routledge.
York, T.T., Gibson, C. and Rankin, S., 2015. Defining and Measuring Academic Success.
Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 20.
Chanamarn, N. and Tamee, K., 2017. Enhancing Efficient Study Plan for Student with Machine
Learning Techniques. International Journal of Modern Education and Computer Science.
9(3). p.1.
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.
Online
Learning styles. 2019. [Online]. Available. Through
<https://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/learning/Introduction.htm>
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