Successful College Students Study Habits

Topic/Overview

Project 4, our Information Exhibit, is coming just around the corner, and so we are starting to gather research and information. My topic is on study habits of successful college students, paired with the 7 habits of highly effective teens (or successful people, really they are the same). I spent a lot of time researching, reading articles, and finding material related to those topics. For those who don’t know, the 7 habits referred to are:

• Be Proactive
• Begin With the End in Mind
• Put First Things First
• Think Win-Win
• Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen The Saw

These will be the base, but since I will be focusing mostly on Study Habits, The first three habits, which are grouped by the Covey’s into being focused on Self Mastery and moving from dependence to independence, will be covered most, while touching on the other four.

Research

I decided that each article had it’s own insights, and although a lot of them are similar, they each present it in a little bit of a different way. So the following list is the Sources I read, and the main focus/insight from each source.

Performance of College Students: impact of Study Time and Study habits:

• A study of 163 business students looking for a relationship between study habits, study time, and the student’s Cumulative GPA and Semester GPA
• Found that “Although study time did not show any direct relationship with SGPA or CGPA, time at work showed significant negative correlations with SGPA and CGPA. Also, the study habits of access to notes and ability to concentrate demonstrated significant and positive relationships. However, the study habit of scheduling did not show a significant relationship with SGPA or CGPA.”

Community College Student Success: The Role of Motivation and Self Empowerment:

• A study of community college graduates and what makes them different from those who didn’t graduate
• “As we reviewed our observational data, several themes regarding successful community college students began to emerge. Successful graduates have (a) clear goals, (b) strong motivation, (c) the ability to manage external demands, and (d) self-empowerment.”

Flying Solo:

• Observations based on the time matrix presented by Stephen Covey about priorities, and where we spend our time. This article talks about how naturally people spend more time doing things in Quadrant 1 (Important and urgent, solving the crisis), especially students. We are driven by a deadline, which is what motivates us to accomplish tasks. However, we will find more success if we will take the time to complete activities in Quadrant 2 (important but not urgent, preparing for the crisis), we will be more successful.

Variation in Study Patterns Among College Students: A Review of Literature:

• “This article evaluates previously published literature regarding variation in study patterns among graduate and undergraduate college students, with a recommendation of preferred studying times and locations from genuinely high-ability students.”
• “Time management is extremely crucial and imperative. By taking an advantage of daytime study pockets, studentsare freeing up valuable nighttime hours to go out and have fun that defines the college experience (Newport, 2007).”
• “Although most collegeclasses are scheduled between 8:00 am and 10:00 pm, some students do their best work before the sun rises, some after sunsets (Dividing Your Argument, 2014). Weekends and holidays are great times for studying and reviewing new course materials (Table 1). Unfortunately, poor time management and lack of flexibility are two major reasons why studies fail because students tend to over-schedule themselves (Time Scheduling, 2014).”
• Study skills cover a variety of activities including setting realistic goals, employing appropriate note-taking and test-taking strategies, self-testing, managing time and anxiety, as well as selecting appropriate study habits and environments (Proctor et al., 2006).

Staying Focused on the Right Priorities:

• An overview of how “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” can be used to create powerful results in business, focusing on priorities, and the difficulty, yet necessity to spend time on those things that are not urgent, but very important – planning for the crisis, instead of just reacting to them.
• Short article, really just an overview

The Secret to Better Grades:

• Tips in achieving better grades in school by unlocking 4 secrets to successful students – Sharpening School Skills, tuning in to the study, setting an A+ example, Unstuff the schedule, praising effort not intellect – based more on high school aged kids, but can be applied to all ages

Effect of Quality and Quantity of Study on Students Grades:

• And investigation of the relationship between test scores and study time in a course on learning principles for college education majors. They found a weak relationship between test scores and the total amount of study time, but a much stronger correlation between those who spent time organizing the course content and those who didn’t. “An extreme groups analysis revealed that students with high test scores spent 40 min. per week organizing compared with 10 min per week for students with low test scores.”

College success strategies / Sherrie L. Nist, Jodi Patrick Holschu:

• This concise and affordable book teaches students the skills and strategies that will enable them to be lifelong learners capable of knowing how to approach new and challenging material in college and beyond.
• Need to pick up from Library and read

Project 4 Group Schedule

I plan on inserting this schedule here once my group gets it solid. Until then, here is a link to our Google Doc, where you can see our working schedule.