By Megan Sumeracki

It’s a new year and a new semester. Many of us are able to start fresh – or at least a little fresher than when we’re in the middle of a semester! – and we’re looking ahead to make changes. I have made some personal goals to stay on top of grading, keep my office organized, and make time to work out and stretch more this semester.

If one of your Spring 2018 semester goals is to create better learning and studying habits, then the Learning Scientists can help you! We have tons of resources on our website that are great for students. So many, that the website can be a bit overwhelming or intimidating. In this blog, I outline 3 ways students can utilize learningscientists.org to help them create better study habits in 2018.

But, remember, change isn’t instantaneous. It usually takes time to develop new habits and truly make change! You don’t need to feel pressured to use all of these resources all at once. Start with one resource, or even part of one, and go from there. Bookmark this blog and come back to it whenever you feel like you’ve hit a wall or need a new resource!

1) Learn how to use the 6 strategies for effective learning.

The resources for the 6 strategies are probably the most important, so I definitely recommend starting here. There are a lot of ways to study, but there are 6 strategies that are particularly helpful. Learning how to use these strategies can be extremely helpful to you. We have a lot of ways for you to learn about the 6 strategies. In fact, utilizing multiple resources to learn about the strategies in multiple formats is best!

• Start by reading the posters. You can read about each of the strategies, and even print these posters out and put them in your study space. You can also check out the posters in other languages.

• Once you have a feel for the strategies, you can watch a short video about each strategy. After the strategy videos, watch the sketch note video that reviews all 6.

• You can read a short blog, written especially for students, about using the 6 strategies during studying. Here are the links for blogs about spacing, retrieval practice, elaboration, interleaving, concrete examples, and dual coding.

• Finally, make sure to remind yourself to use these strategies. You can print stickers and put them in your notebooks, or print bookmarks for textbooks. You can also write directly in your planner!

Remember, you don’t need to learn to use all 6 strategies all at once. We recommend starting with spaced practice, and then retrieval practice. These will provide a good foundation for your planning and studying. After that, you can work on concrete examples, dual coding, elaboration, and interleaving, and work these into your new routine!

2) Check out our Blog and our FAQ page.

Once you start digging into using the strategies, you may start to have nuanced questions about how to use the various strategies, and when. We write a number of blogs (like this one) and many are aimed at students. We have answered some frequently asked questions on our FAQ page. You can start there to see if your question has already been answered. And, you might even find the answer to a question you didn’t know you had!

If you’re looking for specific information that wasn’t on the FAQ page, we recommend you go to our blog archive. There, you can click “For Students” to see all blogs that we think may be helpful for students. You can also click a tag (like retrieval practice) if your question is more specific. For even more specific questions, try typing a word or phrase into our search bar. This will pull up all of our blogs related to that word or phrase, if we have one. Remember, we are always publishing new blogs so be sure to check back whenever you have a question or hit a wall with your studying routine.

3) Follow us on Social Media and Engage with Us!

We have a number of social media accounts with the hope that we can reach out and help students just like you. We have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. (The Instagram and Tumblr are currently both run by an expert college student at Rhode Island College!) We occasionally run Facebook live events where we talk about ways to learn and study and answer questions that viewers post, and we occasionally host chats on Twitter about learning. We also have a Learning Scientists Podcast where we talk about strategies for learning. You can listen online or find us on iTunes and other podcasting apps. This could be a good way to brush up on those strategies you already learned from the resources above!

Cheers to the changes you’re making to your studying habits, and to Spring 2018!