Learning remotely or from home is probably a new experience for many of you, and there may be some uncertainty about how to make the most of it. The Science of Learning Research Centre has put together some strategies and tips that you might find useful, both now whilst you are learning remotely, and in the future when you get back to school or University.
These 10 strategies will help you to study and learn online with your friends or classmates. They will help you to plan what you need to do on a task, give you hints on ways to approach tasks, help you stay focused to get the work done, remember what you have learnt, and think more deeply about ideas. Working with your friends or classmates online should help motivate you as you will keep each other accountable, and you also get to chat and catch up!
How to use these strategies
- Set up a small study group with your friends or classmates – maybe about 4-6 people.
- Set a time when you can all meet up online regularly.
- Identify a subject and a learning task or assessment for a subject that you want to focus on.
- Pick a strategy from the list below, reading the brief descriptions.
- Read through what you need to do individually and as a group.
- Work through the strategy.
Strategies
Hush up and work online strategy - This is a strategy used a lot by university students to help them stay motivated when they are writing. It is a good way to use your friends to help keep you focused and to complete a task that might be difficult to keep your attention on.
Remembering stuff online strategy - To improve your memory of important information, ideas or concepts, you need to bring it to mind after you have learnt it. That means retrieving it from your memory at a later date. The more often you do this, the stronger the memory will become.
What do you think online strategy - Giving feedback to your friends on their work or performance is not just good for your friends, but it is also good for you because it helps you think about what you need to work on.
Developing a deep understanding online strategy - This strategy encourages you and your group to wonder – to interrogate what you think you know, and to share these wonderings for discussion with the group. This will help you to think more deeply about ideas and concepts, so that you can build stronger understanding.
Get to the point online strategy - To check how well you really understand something, try explaining it to someone who knows nothing about it at all! This strategy will help you identify how well you rally do know what you are talking about.
Justify that online strategy - Sometimes we think we might understand something, but we might not be able to explain it very well or justify our position. This strategy helps you to think about things more deeply by building some questions with your group that you can use with each other as a way of identifying what you still need to understand more about.
Puzzle pieces online strategy - You may have done an activity like this in class – it’s called a ‘Jigsaw’ activity. When you have a lot of content or information to cover, breaking it up into smaller pieces and having each member of the group do a part can make the load more manageable. You can then bring it all together and share, just like putting the pieces of a jigsaw together to get the full picture.
Making connections online strategy - This strategy helps you and your group to make connections between ideas or concepts that are related. This can help make difficult ideas easier to understand and remember, and can also help you to remember how events or concepts are sequenced.
Represent it online strategy - In this strategy, you and your group look for ways to represent concepts or ideas in a visual way, maybe with images, diagrams, or flow charts. Representing ideas in two different ways – in words and in pictures, for example makes it easier to remember.
Make it concrete online strategy - Sometimes concepts, ideas, or events are difficult to understand and this also makes it hard to remember them or apply them. Find ways to take difficult or abstract ideas and make them relate to a real experience or object or event – a concrete example, for example, gravity can be represented by an apple falling from a tree. Connecting difficult concepts or ideas to something that you understand well can help link ideas, and make it easier to remember.
This set of tips are on topics that students always ask lots of questions about! They provide you with some ideas on how to make your learning more effective and efficient.
Improving your attention - It is easy to get distracted when you are learning or studying, particularly when you are at home. Here are some tips that might help.
Hush up and work online strategy - This is a strategy used a lot by university students to help them stay motivated when they are writing. It is a good way to use your friends to help keep you focused and to complete a task that might be difficult to keep your attention on.
Remembering stuff online strategy - To improve your memory of important information, ideas or concepts, you need to bring it to mind after you have learnt it. That means retrieving it from your memory at a later date. The more often you do this, the stronger the memory will become.
Developing a deep understanding online strategy - This strategy encourages you and your group to wonder – to interrogate what you think you know, and to share these wonderings for discussion with the group. This will help you to think more deeply about ideas and concepts, so that you can build stronger understanding.
Get to the point online strategy - To check how well you really understand something, try explaining it to someone who knows nothing about it at all! This strategy will help you identify how well you really do know what you are talking about.
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