10 Study Skills for Non-Traditional Students

Quick Reference for When You Need Help Studying Right Now

By Deb Peterson,

Ten study skills for the adult returning to school. Make it easier to balance school, life, work by incorporating these 10 study skills.

1. Create a Study Space

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2. Ask Questions

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Asking and answering questions is one of the most effective ways of learning, whether you're studying alone or with a group, and nothing beats full participation in class for quick learning. Ask questions during class, without making a pest of yourself, of course, and answer your share of the questions posed by others.

3. Take it Step by Step

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When studying gets frustrating, take a break and be inspired by a toddler learning to walk. When you sit back down, break your task into baby steps. Step by step it's easier.

4. Take Notes on a Laptop

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Is it a good idea, or bad? There are pros and cons to taking your laptop into the classroom.

5. Listen Actively

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It's easy to take listening for granted, but many of us really don't have very good listening skills. Do you?

6. Know Your Options for Researching Papers

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Paper research is easier than ever. In addition to trusty old sources like books, the Internet has opened many new doors. Know your choices when you set out to research a paper.

7. Teach What You Learn

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Teaching what you've learned can be one of the very best ways of making sure you understand it. Teach your spouse, your child, and you'll find the chinks in your understanding. Teach your cat if he's the only one around.

8. Write Practice Tests

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Writing your own practice tests is one of the best ways to get higher grades. The extra time investment will pay off.

9. Avoid Stress

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Are you choosing stress? Did you know you have a choice? Dr. Al Siebert teaches people how to avoid stress, and the difference between stressing and straining. Avoid stressing and watch your grades improve.

10. Meditate

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Meditation is one of the great secrets in life. If you're not already someone who meditates, give yourself a gift and learn how. You'll relieve stress, study better, and wonder how you ever got along without it.

Have a tip to share? A problem to solve?

Bookshelf - The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need

By Deb Peterson,
If you’ve ever questioned why students don’t seem prepared for life in the modern world, Tony Wagner has a compelling answer in his book, The Global Achievement Gap. More importantly, he has intriguing questions, and that’s his bottom line: right answers may have been okay in the old world, but knowing how to ask the right questions is the key to survival in the new, global world our students are entering. Socrates knew that eons ago. Why have we lost that critical skill, and what can we do about it?

I fully expected to scan this book for concepts that related to adult students, but I found myself hooked before I reached Chapter 1. As a former editor, I always read prefaces and introductions. Editors seem to be among the few who do. The thing is, these first writings explain the mindset of the author and clue you in to the entire point of the book. Wagner’s beginning is no exception. His book is about the loss of curiosity. Whether you’re a student, parent, teacher, administrator, or non-traditional student (likely, if you’re reading this), getting back in touch with curiosity is the key to your success.

For several decades now, Wagner has been visiting classrooms across the country unannounced to observe what’s really going on in them. He has also talked with business people wherever he encounters them, often randomly on airplanes. He asks them the same question, “What qualities do you most want in a potential new employee?” What he has learned may shock you.

Over and over, Wagner hears that the single most important skill is the ability to ask the right questions. Ellen Kumata told Wagner, “Our system of schooling promotes the idea that there are right answers, and that you get rewarded if you get the answer right. But to be comfortable with this new economy and environment, you have to understand that you live in a world where there isn’t one right answer, or if there is, it’s right only for a nanosecond.”

A hundred years ago, when there were few libraries and change was slow, Wagner explains, teaching children the three R’s, and memorization of facts, may have made sense, but in today’s ever-changing environment, where information is available instantly via the Internet and people work together globally, right answers don’t help. Multiple choice tests are teaching our students only how to choose an option, not how to solve open-ended problems. In the workplace, this is unacceptable.

Wagner outlines Seven Survival Skills for today’s students:

• Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
• Collaboration across Networks and Leading by Influence
• Agility and Adaptability
• Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
• Effective Oral and Written Communication
• Accessing and Analyzing Information
• Curiosity and Imagination

These skills are essential not only for the successful future of business, but are also imperative for citizenship. Imagine jurors with no ability to solve open-ended problems.

The Global Achievement Gap closes with real-life case studies, profiles of schools that have proven the effectiveness of combining the basics with teaching the seven survival skills. Wagner proposes new approaches to teacher certification and suggests the need for certification for administrators. He also emphasizes the need for new ways to motivate students, suggesting that the high dropout rate is a matter of “will, not skill,” that students are bored learning facts that are irrelevant to their lives or careers.

My only complaint about Wagner's book concerns the title. It makes sense after reading the book, but it didn't make me want to pick it up, and this is unfortunate because it's a book whose time has come. In fact, Wagner's questions are ones we should have started asking long ago.

Education is an issue that touches everyone. If you want to be on the leading edge of education in our new world, Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap is a good place to start. And then get busy asking questions.

About the Author

Tony Wagner is co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He consults to schools, districts, and foundations and served as Senior Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. You can find him at www.schoolchange.org.

Goal - Reach Your Goal with a Learning Project Plan - LPP

Make setting and reaching goals easier than ever with a learning project plan.

From Ronald Gross,

This site regularly celebrates self-directed learners – adults who choose to plan, conduct, and appraise their learning themselves rather than relying on an institution.

Here’s a simple planning device – the Learning Project Plan (LPP) – that simplifies this process of defining your goals, marshaling your motivation, identifying the best resources, monitoring your progress, and appraising and documenting your learning.

Over the past decade, the LPP has been adopted by practitioners in fields as diverse as technical writing, electrical manufacturing, and hospital administration. (I’ll describe their experiences at the end of this article.)

Of course, I use it myself. If you asked me right now what I’ve been learning recently, I’d hand you my LPP. It tells what, why, where, when, and how effectively I’m learning this week.

Your LPP can be created electronically on your Personal Digital Assistant, or if you’re still a paper-and-pencil person, created on a regular sheet of copy paper folded into a 4 x 5-inch folded sheet which can be tucked into your day planner. Here’s what’s on the eight panels (front and back) of my current Learning Project Plan.

1. On the front is the Goal, with nine benefits to me and my organization listed underneath. I’m a great believer in multiple-benefit analysis. I always do my best to identify all the benefits and advantages of any learning project, rather than just the most obvious one. It strengthens motivation by drawing from different psychological sources: the utilitarian, the emotional, the imaginative, the altruistic, etc. ("What will this learning enable me to do?" "How will it feel to have mastered this subject or skill?" "What new opportunities will it open up?" "How can I share it with others?")

2. Opening this miniature booklet, the next panel covers three ways in which I’m making my learning more comfortable by using my personal learning style.This personalizes the scheme to my comfort zone.

3. Now, unfolding the paper to its full size to reveal the inside spread, there’s a mind-map of relevant opportunities, resources, people, and technology. I like to put these all down in one display, rather than divide them into separate lists, because they so often inter-relate.

   Moreover, the mind-map format invites continual additions as new possibilities present themselves. At the start of each day, for example, I open the mind map and think for a moment: “What’s coming up today that could contribute to this learning project?” Just about every time I do this, something comes to mind that I would not have thought of otherwise.

   Specifically, the LPP prompts me to tap the knowledge and experience of colleagues, to be on the qui vive for input from the media and the Internet, and to identify new sources of information and expertise.

4. Folding the sheet again to reveal the back panels, there’s an Action Plan with deadlines, and a Results panel to monitor my progress and document results.

   These results, like the goals, should be multiple. Take the time to relish what your learning has meant to you not just in terms of knowledge or mastery of skills, but in enjoyment, self-regard, opportunities, and the prospect of sharing what you are learning with others.

This miniature blueprint for learning took me about an hour to draft, then another hour or two, spread over a few days, to refine with additional ideas. Now it guides and stimulates my learning. All on one simple folded piece of paper! It’s a great way to learn – personal, powerful, and practical – and fun.

I’ve been advocating this system to associations of professionals in a variety of fields for several years. When I proposed it to the Association of Professional Directors of YMCAs in North America, for example, the members found it so attractive that the association adopted it as an alternative modality through which members could fulfill their obligation for Continuing Professional Education.

“Learning Plans are one of the most important tools our members have ever mastered,” said APD leader Jim Stooke.

Here are the advantages of this form of learning:

• It puts you in control of your learning.
• It taps energy and motivation often under-utilized in conventional instruction.
• It accommodates to your personal style, pace, schedule, and changing interests.
• It permits fine-tuning of goals, methods, and resources in the course of the learning.
• It strengthens your underlying capacity for self-directed learning in your life.

Your LPP will have a different tone and tenor, depending on your individual and organizational needs. For example, when I presented it to members of the Society for Technical Communication, whose workday is measured in nano-seconds, it was clear that some steroids were needed to kick up the pace a few notches.

So we focused on learning encounters – down-and-dirty projects to master technical skills and information on the run, including the “Hey, Joe School” (“Hey, Joe, how did you install that new interface software?”) and “Hallway Learning” in which vital information gets moved around an organization through casual encounters. (Dixon, N.M, The Hallways of Learning , Organizational Dynamics, 25(4), 23-24).

Again, when I instigated the approach with medical administrators at a conference on Quality Improvement in Hospitals, I found the conferees embroiled in the turmoil of health care in the U.S. Therefore, we formulated LPPs that strengthened the inner focus of these dedicated professionals to help them maintain their integrity amidst the roiling waters of controversy.

I hope you find the LPP, as I do, an engine, compass, and caliper for jump-starting, guiding, and appraising your learning.