The article “Ready for College?” in the January, 2016 issue of The Teaching Professor discusses a survey given to 700 students, mostly sophomores, in which they were asked how well they felt they were prepared for college. Eighty percent of the students had come directly to college from high school, and 70 percent said their high schools had prepared them well. But over 50 percent of them indicated that college was more challenging than they expected.
They were also given a list and asked what two academic skills they wished that high school had helped them develop further, “48 percent said time management, 39 percent said exam preparation, 37 percent identified general study skills, and 27 percent noted independent thinking. Only 12 percent identified studying to understand and remember.”
The article points out that the “researchers point out that data collected from fellow college students might be what it takes to get new students to move in the direction of more accurate self-assessment.”
The article points out that it is “troubling that very few of these students saw the need to develop independent thinking capabilities or study skills that resulted in understanding and remembering course content. They did see the need to learn how to better prepare for exams but apparently didn’t think that understanding the material was a good way to prepare.”
My thoughts:
Time management is something probably most of us struggle with, but we’ve probably learned some techniques and strategies that could be passed on to our students. One small thing that I’ve passed on to students is to use the free app and website Wunderlist. Items entered into this task management site is synced to the app, and vice versa.
How do we get students to value understanding the concepts and principles we want them to learn, and not just memorize them for a test? Let’s minimize having them learn “factoids” (facts that have no relevance to anything else). Give them Learning Objectives. Of course, some of those learning objectives are going to be facts because higher order thinking involves thinking with those facts. Maybe case studies will help them to see the relevance of what they are learning, as well as help them to think and understand.
Reference: Verrell, P.A. and McCabe, N.R. (2015) In their own words: Using self-assessment of college readiness to develop strategies for self-regulated learning. College Teaching, 63 (4), 162-170.