Welcome Students!

Keys to Help You Learn

College can mean a big change from the successes you experienced in high school; it can demand more of your time. You may have earned excellent grades and did well in academics in high school. The learning environment in college is different. There is more work to do with less time and more competition for good grades. Faculty expect a higher level of academic performance.

The situation in college boils down to working harder, smarter and more efficiently to ensure good grades.Work with your professors and teaching assistants. They will help you.

The academic challenges can mean more readings with complicated content, many more papers to write, labs to prepare for, and notes to take for lectures. There is more reading to do, more notes to take, more content to make sense of, more papers to organize, structure, and write and more content detail to recall. College can mean much more reading, research time, note organizing and summarizing, paper writing and lab preparation with less time to prepare and more pressure for good grades.

College academics require a student to be organized, academically competent and efficient in many types of learning tasks.

Learn to Learn

Learning is a very personal matter. There isn't one study/learning skill or strategy that works for every person in every situation. Therefore, learning to learn strategies are about learning what you know, what you don't know, and what to do about it. Your repertoire of study/learning strategies will:

• enable you to take more responsibility for your own learning
• allow you to spend your time effectively and stay on task
• help you select the best approach(s) for each assignment or task
• present you with access to a variety of content and reference materials
• give you the confidence to know when and who to ask for help

Concepts of Learning

Conceptions of learning are the beliefs and ideas people have about what learning actually means. People often think that the notion of learning means the same to everyone. Research is showing that the conception of learning an individual holds actually influences the way in which he/she approaches tasks in class, which ultimately affects the quality of the learning outcome.

Learning Strategies

Employing appropriate strategies is essential in college due to the nature and volume of work. Post secondary learning requires students to connect old and new information, extend or make new associations, and effectively use their memory capacities. Strategies also provide structure to deal with the higher-order processing demanded in college but not stressed in high school.

Learning Styles

Students preferentially take in and process information in different ways: by seeing and hearing, reflecting and acting, reasoning logically and intuitively, analyzing and visualizing, steadily and in fits and starts. Teaching methods also vary. Some instructors lecture, others demonstrate or lead students to self-discovery; some focus on principles and others on applications; some emphasize memory and others understanding.

When mismatches exist between learning styles of most students in a class and the teaching style of the professor, the students may become bored and inattentive in class, do poorly on tests, get discouraged about the courses, the curriculum, and themselves, and in some cases change to other curricula or drop out of school. Professors, confronted by low test grades, unresponsive or hostile classes, poor attendance and dropouts, know something is not working. They may become overly critical of their students (making things even worse) or begin to wonder if they are in the right profession. Most seriously, society loses potentially excellent professionals.

Assistive Technologies to Help You

Find out about software and computer devices to help you. For more informaton contact Bill McGraw at 265-0534 or wmcgraw@wisc.edu

Additional Websites

Below are a few link to web site which discuss how to be a successful college student, adult learner and life-long learner. Explore and experiment with your study habits.

For more information: call Bill McGraw at 265-0534 or email wmcgraw@wisc.edu.