the college homework help

the college homework help

Effective Strategies for College Homework Success

1. Introduction to College Homework

When many people think about homework, they think about work assigned for kids in elementary, middle, or high school. After all, students in those grades often come home with options for math problems to solve, five-paragraph essays to write, or facts to memorize about a solar system. However, these same people tend to forget that homework is important for college students, too. Don’t be deceived by the name: “homework” isn’t just for kids! College students often have homework each week, and it can consist of essay or short-answer responses, mathematical equations or formulas, problem-based activities to prepare for class, and more. In college, homework is supposed to help you review what you’ve covered in class so that you can achieve the key course objectives and be successful in your future studies.

The type of work college instructors assign to help students learn spans the first-year writing course to the capstone of a student’s major program and beyond. In a first-year writing seminar, work assigned to students might include essays, exercises to help students develop their language or formatting knowledge, or group writing tasks. In a junior-level seminar, students might complete group projects, work through activities to help them understand new technical procedures, or prepare for a research presentation. In a capstone course, on the other hand, students might analyze texts applying all the skills that they have learned in the major in order to learn how to do the job that they will be expected to do after graduation. With these deep concentration skills and inquisitive traits in mind, it’s important to develop effective and efficient college homework habits that can help you along the way.

2. Time Management and Organization

In college, you’re required to do homework in and out of class and to study what you’ve learned. The better you manage and organize your time, the better you’ll do in college. You’ll write better papers and do better on tests, which will help you to get better grades. This can lead to a better start in your later career. As part of time management, you can apply good study habits to maintain a productive pace and to find time for fun and relaxation. In college, you’ll never need as many study habits, especially those that are scheduled, as you will when you first get there. You’ll be busier than you can imagine, so you’ll need to plan, manage, and protect your study time.

When you know how to manage your time and to organize your study time and study environment, your studying should also include planning for and taking breaks. This way, you put leisure time to good use by resting, renewing your energy, and reducing stress. The key is not wasting any time for any longer than the time you planned to relax. Reading, napping, moderate exercise, particularly those that take you outdoors, are generally considered effective ways to relax. You also don’t have to be particularly structured all the time, but a productive structure will help you ease into college requirements and then develop better college habits.

3. Effective Study Techniques

How to form a study group: Create a schedule that includes the time and location for the group study sessions. Everyone should commit to the same schedule by deciding on specific days and times to lock into the schedule. As the time approaches, you’ll know you have a social commitment to work on the material, and you’ll be more likely to follow through.

How to brainstorm and ask questions: The ability to ask questions during study group sessions helps to fill gaps in your own understanding of material, but it also benefits everyone else in the group. If one person has a question about the material, it may be something that others have been pondering as well. A question can lead to a deep and meaningful class discussion, which is why it can be helpful to prepare a set of questions for each class session. Before each study session, mentally review what you’ve learned and jot down a few key questions on separate paper or save them in a doc on your laptop or tablet to help seed the discussion at the start. In addition, your questions may help remind others about key concepts or clarify their confusions as well, helping create team interactions that deepen the understanding and retention of the topics.

Insider Tips – Activities to Avoid: It is important to avoid activities that nurture doubt and discomfort during a study session. Comparing test scores is an obvious detractor, though I would add that “test score comparison” is a dangerous practice in any form – including routine comparisons between you and classmates in other classes. As the ancient wisdom reminds us: “Comparison is the enemy of contentment.” Social media during breaks is another trap to avoid during your study session – it can draw your focus away from the material and into the lives of others, further distancing you from the subject at hand. At the risk of overstating it, anyone on their phone is not engaged in the study group. They might as well be sightseeing on the Great Wall of China.

4. Utilizing Resources and Seeking Help

Whether feeling stressed or not, all college students will need to utilize some kind of help in their college careers. This is because one of the differences between college, where you are officially considered an adult, and high school, is the fact that in college, pretty much everything is solely your own responsibility. Your parents, professors, advisors, or friends are not there to make you do anything. In high school, teachers usually keep an eye on what work you owe them, but in college, you are on your own. Part of becoming independent is learning how to evaluate your own learning, and that includes knowing when to ask for help.

Not being aware of this, a lot of students are extremely hesitant to ask their professors for help. This is the reason for the frequent cancelled office hours by professors. A professor is not just there to learn lectures and grade your work. They are research experts in their respective fields, and the college has hired them to serve as expert links in connecting the student’s relating experiences in the classroom with the broader experience of society. Also inefficient are the days that you refuse to ask someone else for help because of embarrassment, and whatever the issue may be, let’s face it, we all have had our share of them. The best solution is to ask for help. Some students go to the extreme of not knowing how to handle asking for help or do not have proper research skills. This is why some students fail when they get to graduate school.

5. Conclusion and Recap

Our five strategies for college homework success can work individually, but they may be most effective when they work together. Strategy 1, Clarify your goals, helped you know and understand your academic objectives for the week, enabling you to do better thinking and learning based on these goals. Strategy 2, Remember and use your syllabus (Know the question before you begin), is essential to be able to orient, organize, and evaluate your intellectual work for the week. Strategy 3, Do your assigned reading before the other college homework, used the natural order of reading, thinking about, and discussing ideas. Read first, discuss second, write or problem solve or otherwise synthesize third. Strategy 4, The four Rs of note-taking used reading, reacting, reflecting, and reaching out to help you do the hard work of studying and homework. This reading, reacting, and reflecting takes time, but it is your investment in learning and college success. Strategy 5, Test yourself, used the engineered memory failures during the usual study processes to produce powerful learning. Testing yourself produces the best studying and conceptual understanding. Use testing to enhance learning.

The five strategies explained practical advice five different teaching skills that incorporate active learning into the college classroom – clarifying goals, providing the question before the reading, using natural episodic memory on assignments, using note-taking to improve learning, and understanding the power of testing. Isn’t it ironic? After 20 or more years in formal education (plus important pre-college years in family or other settings) and tens or hundreds of thousands of tuition and fees paid (or tens or hundreds of thousands of student loans), students must still do the work and learn the lessons inherent in effective studying, homework, and learning. The practical advice, based on decades of research about effective classroom teaching and learning in college, has the power to help you, the student, use your educational investment to achieve the level of college success you desire. Good luck on your assignments.