How To Become An Engaged Learner
Can you believe it? A new semester is here. The first week of class is when you should start preparing for exams. Seems early right? But it’s never too early!
Engaged Learning
One of the best ways to get prepped for upcoming exams is to become an engaged learner. An engaged learner is one that gradually learns the material as a course proceeds. This is the opposite of a student who crams everything in the night before a test.
As you would expect an engaged learner tends to outperform the last-minute students on every exam.
This is because there’s no new material to figure out the night before the exam. Engaged students merely have to review what they’ve already learned in bits and pieces throughout the semester.
Want to know how to become an engaged learner? Well, here are some tips…
Before Lecture Review
Before each class you should review your notes from the previous class. Focus on the major points and concepts.
If examples were worked in your engineering or math courses, you should quickly review those to make sure you recall important equations and how they’re used.
This should be a quick review that lasts about 5-10 minutes depending on how hard the class is.
After Lecture Review
After each class, you should take the time to review the new information taught that day. Read over the notes you took in class and summarize the important points.
You should also try to fill in any blanks you may have left during lecture. If there are terms you’re unsure about look them up.
Engineering students, if you’re struggling with taking good notes you should try the tips I talked about here. Rewriting your notes will also greatly boost your understanding. This was the one thing that really helped me keep a high GPA.
This step can take awhile depending on the course but I promise you it’s worth it!
Weekly Review
At the end of each week you should review your notes from that week. When you do this think about how this week’s material applies to previous learned topics.
If it’s a class that requires memorization, work to memorize the important concepts.
For problem based courses like engineering, you may find it helpful to make flashcards of important equations and theories. Another good thing to do is to create an equation sheet that you add to every week when you get new equations.
This really helps save time during homework sessions since you’ll have all the equations right there in front of you.
Assignments
We’ve focused on lectures and notes up until now but to truly become engaged you must do the assigned work.
I know lots of students think their instructors just assign busy work but I promise you that’s not the case in most instances. So, if reading is assigned make sure you do it even if you don’t want to. If problems are assigned for homework, start them early so that you’ll have time for questions if you get stuck on something.
What you don’t want to do is wait until the last minute. First off, you’ll be stuck cramming everything in right before an exam or due date. And secondly, material from those assignments may be needed to understand the next lecture. Being prepared for the next lecture is a key to success, especially in hard majors like engineering.
Get To It
Start off the new semester right. Get involved in your class, prepare for lectures and save yourself lots of stress when it’s exam time. Engaged learning is a key to your success as a student.
