Take and use your own notes

We know that notes are important, and we’ve covered how to take notes, but wouldn’t it be a lot faster and more effective to buy good notes instead of taking them yourself? After all, services like NoteWagon and Notehall make it so easy.

The answer may be obvious, but taking and using your own notes is a better choice. A recent study confirmed that students relying on learner-generated annotations perform better than their peers relying on instructor-generated annotations. The act of taking the notes reinforces learning and your own notes will be more familiar. Of course, if you miss a class and can’t take your own notes, some notes are better than none – but don’t think they’re a substitute for your own work.

Take your own notes

Does your path get you to the finish line on time?

While we already know that procrastination is the enemy of gradehacking, sometimes we unavoidably end up in situations where time is limited and a lot needs to get done. When you’re working to tight deadlines (and even when you’re not), an awareness of your critical path – the shortest time possible to complete a set of planned activities with consideration for dependencies – is important if you don’t want to miss deadlines.

Some of you may be thinking that every path of planned activities is linear (and therefore a critical path) when you’re working independently, but that’s not necessarily true. Every large project is still likely to have constraints and dependencies – library hours for research, availability of resources, etc. For team projects, the capability to appropriately schedule activities becomes even more important.

Here’s what you need to know to figure out the critical path:

• a list of all activities required to complete a project
• the time that each activity will take
• the dependencies between activities

With all of that information, you can figure out (perhaps with the aid of a diagram) the minimum time to complete a project and manage your schedule accordingly. Let’s try a quick example of writing a paper… say you want to do some research, write the paper, get it peer-reviewed before submission and get it formatted to APA standards. Maybe the research can only happen on weekdays to accommodate library hours, and the peer review takes 5 days but you can work on formatting the paper to APA standards (which only takes a few hours) during this time. So maybe the critical path includes the research, writing, peer-reviewing and incorporating feedback (not the formatting), and you schedule in consideration of library hours.

Mapping out your activities and how to schedule them can help to keep complex assignments on track and keep you focused. If you’re having trouble meeting deadlines, give some consideration to the critical path when you start a new project.

Critical Path planning

Find motivation and work with focus to acquire new skills and knowledge

One hour doesn’t always equal one hour when it comes to schoolwork; a focused, productive hour is worth a lot more to you than a distracted hour that yields no results. In a 1993 study comparing the practice habits of elite violinists to average violinists at a music academy, both groups were discovered to invest about the same amount of time to practice. Shocking, right? You’d probably expect the elite group to be spending a lot more time on their craft. What did clearly distinguish the groups, however, was how they spent that time.

The average students tended to spread their practice time out over the day in short spurts, accumulating the practice time but not really planning it. The elite students, on the other hand, divided their practice time into smaller groups (usually 2 highly focused practice sessions per day) and focused their time on expanding their skill with deliberate practice. Moreoever, elite players slept an hour more per night and developed clear distinctions between work and play.

There are several lessons for students to take away from the study. When you work, do it with focus and determination to accomplish a specific goal. Do it with absolute focus and then put it out of your mind. If you find yourself staying up late worrying about your work, you’re doing something wrong; if you’re find yourself tired and anxious then it’s time to revisit your fundamental approach to schoolwork. Putting more time in is not the right approach, and if you take away anything from the example of the violin students, it’s to find your own way to work deliberately, not harder.

Work deliberately

Great teachers make great students

In an earlier article, I discussed the importance of teacher research to improve your likelihood of receiving better marks. Beyond the short-term benefit of better marks, a study published earlier this year highlights the long-term benefits of excellent teachers. If you have a great teacher, you’re more likely to enrol in college and you’ll probably earn more money. In anecdotal examples, great teachers can reveal new career paths and interests that yield greater satisfaction and happiness. With good teachers you’re more engaged, and engagement drives success.

Don’t leave getting a great teacher up to school boards or administrators. If you don’t get a great teacher, switch classes. If you knew that having one great teacher for a year raises someone’s lifetime income by an average $52,000 (per the study), doesn’t that seem worth a bit of extra effort?

Source: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/value_added.pdf

Choose great teachers

Approachable and engaged – a winning combination for students

“Just be yourself.” You’ve heard it from countless people, you’ll hear it from countless more. I’m going to break the pattern and tell you that it’s terrible advice when it comes to gradehacking. Give your teachers and graders what they want. Fit in. Conform.

Here’s the simple truth: it’s easier for an instructor to give you a better grade if she likes you. Whether it’s conscious or not, anything that can frighten, offend, intimidate or cause discomfort is going to contribute to a negative impression that will show up in your grades. Marking is never entirely objective, and beyond the grades themselves, consider this – is a teacher more likely to help out and extend opportunities to a student she admires or one that she doesn’t like to be around?

So put your instructor at ease. Wear clothing that’s safe and subdued. Follow the Platinum Rule – Treat others as they want to be treated. Don’t earn attention for the wrong reasons or isolate yourself. And never create unwelcome conflict.

As a starting point, try applying these tips adapted from Dale Carnegie to get instructors to like you:

• Be genuinely interested in your teacher
• Smile
• Address your teacher respectfully in the manner she prefers
• Be a good listener and engage your teacher in discussion about her interests
• Make your teacher feel important and like she’s helping you

Maybe you’re thinking, “That’s great, but I’m not a sheep and if I fit in too much, I’ll get lost in the crowd. Moreover, it’s unhealthy for me as a person to pretend to be someone I’m not.” First, we’re gradehacking, so anything that improves your marks comes first. The objective is also to try to do this genuinely; you’ll need these skills to network successfully in the business world anyway and it becomes more natural with practice.

It’s also important to emphasize that you still want to attract the right kind of attention. You want to be on your teacher’s radar. Be the model student in class, answer questions, volunteer, engage her in discussion and focus on her interests. Use office hours and make that extra effort to show interest and appreciation. Maybe you run across an obscure article while you’re online that’s related to something that came up in class, so you email it to your instructor with the note, “Ran across this and thought it might be of interest after our class discussion last week; it really drives home your point about XXX.” That’s gold.

As hard as it is sometimes to be empathetic and put someone else’s insecurities above your individuality, give it a try in your classes anyway. Your grades are worth it.

Conform

A goal without a plan is just a wish.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Setting good goals should be an important part of your gradehacking strategy

Students who take the initiative to set their own goals tend to show improvement as a result of those goals. Take this result with a grain of salt since it comes from a for-profit education group, but a recent study had a group of students set their own goals using the SMART technique and 94% of students in that group achieved improvement over the semester.

Settings goals is a great way to improve your performance, but the process only works if two things are true – (i) you set the goals yourself, so they’re not coming from a teacher or parent, and (ii) you know how to set effective goals. You can’t just write down that your plan is to score 100% on every test and then expect it to happen. One technique widely used in schools and businesses to set goals that are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realist and time-bound.

Let’s break down SMART goals a bit further. Any goal that you set should be specific, so it will probably include quantitative (i.e. numbers-driven) criteria and be easily understood. Measurable means it’s easy to tell when you’ve achieved it or how far away you are from it. A goal should be ambitious but something you can actually accomplish, and be feasible enough to inspire you to get to a new level of accomplishment. It’s also important to define a timeline for your goal; a target isn’t much good if you can put it off indefinitely, and shorter-term goals help to keep you focused and motivated.

Let’s try some samples. “I’ll work harder this term” is an example of a terrible goal. Ok, it’s time-bound, but how much harder and what’s the outcome? Here’s a goal that’s more effective: “I’ll improve my economics grade by 15% by the end of the semester.”

Try setting some SMART goals the next time you’re trying to find ways to improve your performance.

Set SMART goals

Try mixing up your teams

A new study  finds that working in teams that emphasize diversity improves soft skills. What a great way to do many things at once! The work gets done, you meet new people and you improve yourself. Sure, projects might take a bit longer, but looking for geographic, ethnic, interest and skill diversity when forming teams can foster the development of better interpersonal skills and help you network with your peers. In a world where businesses require employees to collaborate across diverse teams, getting a head start on the skills you’ll need is a great idea.

Improve soft skills with team diversity

All-night gigs courtesy of your roommate’s band probably aren’t good for your sanity – or grades

If you move away to college or university, you’ll likely have at least one roommate during your time at school. The importance of choosing a great roommate should not be underestimated – consider it as important as your choice of school and classes.

Studies show that roommate peer effects significantly influence your GPA. Worse yet, roommate conflict ranks as one of the top 5 reasons for dropping out of school and can be one of your biggest sources of stresses.

Don’t leave roommate selection up to random assignment, and don’t choose a roommate that you know will be a poor influence just because it’s convenient or it’s the only person you know. Find out if your school has any roommate selection support tools, or try a third-party tool like Roomsurf.

Source: Huffington Post

Find a great roommate

Basic mind map guidelines

A mind map is a diagram that depicts information visually to connect ideas related to a central theme or idea. You start out with a single topic at the centre of a page (or image), branch out with major ideas, words or concepts that are connected to it, and continue radiating out words, ideas or tasks that link to the central idea and categories. An example of a mind map is shown to the right.

Why are mind maps important? Because visual aids and mapping out relationships helps you remember things better and improve your understanding. Here’s a recent study that supports their positive impact, and I’ve seen other data suggesting that incorporating mind mapping into note-taking and studying improves retention by 10%. That may not seem like a lot, but if you can remember 10% more during a text, that can mean a letter grade of difference. For more evidence of the effectiveness of mind mapping, click here.

So how do you do it? Here are the steps the creator of the mind mapping concept recommends (taken from Wikipedia):

1. Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.
2. Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.
3. Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.
4. Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.
5. The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The central lines are thicker, organic and thinner as they radiate out from the centre.
6. Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.
7. Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.
8. Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.
9. Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.
10. Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy, numerical order or outlines to embrace your branches.

Included below is video that outlines a 6-step process for mind mapping; the example uses software, but the concepts also apply to paper-based mind maps or maps created in other software.

The next time you’re taking notes on a complex subject, studying to memorize related information, organizing your thoughts, planning a paper, making decisions or anything else where exploring relationships might be helpful, give mind mapping a try. And share your mind mapping stories in the comments!

Learn to use mind maps

Sometimes you just need someone to show you the ropes

In an earlier post I talked about the benefits of a technology prep course, but any sort of fundamental skills, technology or knowledge courses or coaching opportunities offered by your school are usually a great idea. They’re typically free too!

A recent study in Georgia showed that students completing a College Survival Skills program with the support of a “Success Coach” resulted in improved student engagement, better retention and higher GPAs. Students felt better connected to their programs and more confident tackling their coursework (in this case, math). Similar results showed up in this recent study.

So hunt down those free prep courses and get engaged. You’re likely to perform better, especially if you’re just starting in a new school!

Take prep courses!