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How to succeed at University: twelve tips for undergraduate students

Another great start-of-term post from regular contributor Chris Buddle (@CMBuddle). Some helpful tips to share with your students.

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Associate Director, Learning Environments, Teaching and Learning Services, McGill University. Focused on our physical and digital learning environments and the appropriate and effective use of technology in teaching and learning.

Associate Director, Learning Environments, Teaching and Learning Services, McGill University. Focused on our physical and digital learning environments and the appropriate and effective use of technology in teaching and learning.

1 comment on “How to succeed at University: twelve tips for undergraduate students

  1. Carolyn Samuel

    Lots of good advice that I hope students will heed!

    Item #6 “Keep up!” is a point that I’ve been particularly emphasizing with students, perhaps because I recently read a book called The Power of Habit (http://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/). Also, I’ve been introducing students to the relevance of The Curve of Forgetting (http://uwaterloo.ca/counselling-services/curve-forgetting) regarding retaining lecture content. (It’s not mentioned at the site that the curve is attributed to German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve.) Students are generally receptive to the idea that ten minutes of review time within 24 hours of hearing a lecture is beneficial, and 10 minutes seems like a reasonable commitment. The trick is to make that review time a habit. In order to foster such study behaviour among my students, I encourage them to set short term goals that will result in a reward sooner rather than later. The reward should motivate them to keep up the behaviour so that it becomes a habit.

    If anyone else has shared The Curve of Forgetting with their students, how did they–the students–react to it? If you’ve never shared The Curve with your students, would you consider using it to foster sound study habits?

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