This article lays out the broad concepts and covers useful details about the best learning strategies for students.

Look:

Every person has unique ways of learning and retaining information. What works for some won’t necessarily work for others. So, it’s essential to understand what learning strategies and techniques will suit your needs and be the most effective for you in the long run. The academic experts at our college essay writing service have done the job for you: They helped us craft this ultimate guide on the topic so that you know how to organize your learning process.

So:

What are some strategies for college students to boost academic performance and make learning more comfortable and efficient?

Let’s start from the basics:

 What Are Learning Strategies for College Students?

You know the meaning behind a “strategy,” right?

A strategy is an action plan a person or a group uses to achieve a goal. For college students, the strategy is about achieving individual educational goals. The strategy provides a framework for making decisions, self-assessing, and adapting the best behaviors and techniques to fulfill these goals.

Learning strategies for college students are methods students choose to improve their academic success. They are techniques one adapts based on the purpose and requirements of a specific learning situation.

Below you’ll find several learning strategies examples to understand the concept better.

Learning Strategies Examples for Students

There are many learning strategies for students, depending on the purpose, the performer, and the expected results. Thus, American psychiatrist William Glasser describes two types of learning strategies: active and passive.

The author specifies passive strategies as ineffective, while active learning is efficient. According to his theory, students learn only 10% by reading, 20% by writing, and 50% by observing and listening. At the same time, active learning makes them absorb 70% by discussing, 80% by practicing, and 95% by teaching.

With that in mind, professional teachers use active methodologies to organize classroom activities and encourage students to participate in the process.

This article’s edition is about the active strategies you, as a student, can use to polish your learning process.

A Learning Cycle to Consider

Educational theorists Bownell and Eison describe active learning techniques as “anything involving students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing.” 

Three fundamental components of active learning:

1. Engagement — concentration and interest in the subject
2. Reflection — returning to the subject to imprint the knowledge and fix it in memory
3. Application — the practical use of the learned material

All three, including collaboration with an educator, are critical for an efficient learning cycle and for helping the brain retain information for longer.

Here are the steps:

1. Preview before class (skim the material, review summaries, and note any heading or subheading you find essential).
2. Attend class (take notes, ask questions during and after class).
3. Review after class (review notes within 24 hours, fill the gaps, if any).
4. Study the material (read, ask questions, create study aids, repeat).
5. Assess your learning (ask yourself if your study methods are effective and if you understand the material well enough).

All five elements of the learning cycle require active learning ideas to work. More on that below.

9 Active Learning Ideas [+ Benefits]

The benefits of active learning strategies for students:

• Active learning helps students retain content better by actively engaging with it through discussion, teaching, or application.
• It cultivates critical thinking because learners absorb information and analyze and evaluate it, fostering better decision-making and problem-solving.
• Active learning strategies develop confidence and help one acquire greater autonomy.
• Many active learning strategies include group activities, encouraging students to develop interpersonal skills and to work as a team. (This will come in handy in the workplace.)
• Active learning makes students proactive and responsible, which will help them become qualified and valued professionals who succeed in their careers.

Learning methods and how to get the most out of them:

Below are some practical strategies teachers use to implement an active learning approach to the educational environment. These nine active learning ideas also work on the student side, so you’re welcome to research and add some to your learning cycle.

1) Elaboration:

This method allows you to determine whether you have grasped the concepts. Draw connections between topics you learn with as many details as possible. Ask “why” questions to go deeper into each idea.

2) Brainstorming sessions:

Use them to stimulate creativity and idea generation. You can group with classmates to list various possibilities and solutions to a discussed problem or do it alone. The only guideline here: When brainstorming, don’t make any judgments on your ideas; you’ll do it later.

3) The muddiest point:

Reflect on areas you didn’t understand or points you found more complex during a lesson, and don’t be afraid to tell your teacher about it. Providing such feedback helps your educator see your knowledge gaps and improve future interactions.

4) Flipped classroom:

The idea is that students explore every learning source independently before class (see the first step of the learning cycle above) to free up lesson time for active discussions and other activities. So, do your homework and come to classes prepared.

5) Experiential learning:

This method develops practical skills through hands-on activities and transferring the learned material to real-world situations. There may be no better strategy than this for appreciating the relevance of your studies.

6) Dual coding:

This method refers to using several stimuli to encode information. In learning, it’s about combining visual codes (a diagram, a graph, a table, etc.) and verbal cues to make two sites of the brain cortex work on the data we receive.

7) Interactive quizzes:

Your teacher can use quizzes and polls to assess your knowledge, but you are welcome to practice this active learning strategy yourself. Go online and search for a list of educational quizzes pertaining to your topics of interest — and voila! Why not add some fun to your learning process?

8) Debates and discussions:

Actively participate in classroom discussions to develop your critical thinking and argumentative skills. Follow the discourse rules to reduce the harmful elements of debates and prevent unnecessary quarrels.

9) Learning communities:

They foster teamwork, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. You can teach peers, share insights, learn from others, and assist with citation styles, formatting, and writing papers or other assignments. Join forums for students, be a writer to help others, and participate in discussions to solve study-related problems collaboratively.

Active Learning Techniques

Are you craving more?

The below active learning strategies are at your service:

1. Spaced practice: Plan a calendar to revise your learned information regularly and in chunks instead of being an all-nighter trying to remember everything a day before an exam.
2. Project-based learning: Explore solutions within a specific context (use specific tech or cite resources) to know what to do when faced with a situation.
3. Problem-based learning: Apply your knowledge and skills in a practical context to cultivate your critical thinking and decision-making skills.
4. Case study: Explore your theoretical knowledge in real-world situations to learn how to solve problems and see if the knowledge you have gained is sound.
5. Self-explanation: Make it a habit to reflect on your thought process. (How did you learn the information? Describe the steps leading to the concept). Explaining your thought process will help an educator understand whether they teach you right and how to make your learning cycle more efficient.

What Are Some Strategies Worth Trying?

Let’s face it: Not all strategies are made equal. Some are more efficient, others are easier to implement, and some are better to ignore.

This chart demonstrates the diversity of active learning strategies for students with their simplicity or complexity:

Source: University of Minnesota

Here are five essential learning strategies for college students.

Academic Strategies for Students

• Study charts

This strategy is great for summarizing and organizing the critical concepts that you learned. Charts help you see each topic’s big picture and details to analyze processes, theories, models, and practices. You can use this instrument for all courses and disciplines.

• Using assignments to test your knowledge

Before you start doing an assignment:

1. Read the corresponding paragraph of your textbook or the relevant part of your class notes.
2. Analyze the assigned question and write your response.
3. Revise it word by word, including the introduction, body, and conclusion. Identify what you’ve missed or misunderstood.

This practice allows you to self-assess your knowledge, promoting deeper learning and better results.

• Working in pairs

It’s your opportunity to teach peers (more on this strategy below) and learn from them. Working in pairs or groups allows you to evaluate your results and adjust your learning strategies accordingly. Get engaged in discussions to stimulate your critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

• Teaching to others

Do you know the saying, “If you want to remember something, teach it to others?” This active learning strategy is among the best and most efficient ways to absorb information.

By explaining a concept to others in a way that they understand it, you remember it better and also see the gaps in your understanding, thus assessing your knowledge and filling those gaps.

• Creating practice tests

Active learning strategies for students are all about engagement, self-assessment, reflection, and adjustment. Create a series of questions (use quizzes, assignments, and lecture notes you had during the course; the syllabus and textbook will also help) to practice questions and answers before a test or an exam. It will strengthen your learning and guide you to what to expect during your knowledge assessment.

5 Learning Strategies for Students to Practice

Are you still here?

Great!

With the 15+ learning strategies for college students that we’ve already mentioned in this article, more techniques might seem like an overload, but we’ll go forward with them anyway. This is the point where all the above strategies will only work with the five below.

These 5 learning strategies for students will benefit anyone, regardless of their learning style and academic level.

1 — Time Planning and Management

Time is the head of everything, and it will work for you only if you make friends with it and know how to organize it to your advantage. Time management is critical for college students:

• It allows you to work smarter, not harder.
• It provides more opportunities to achieve goals, get higher grades, and (finally!) overcome the fear of failure.
• It makes you less stressed and anxious about your academic overload and the pressure to succeed you might get from educators and relatives who believe that high grades equal success in one’s life and career.

Use planners, calendars, and other tools to organize your work schedule. Consider prioritization. Learn to say no to activities that don’t help you achieve your academic goals. Delegate when applicable.

Remember to add breaks to your work schedule. Not only are they essential for your productivity, but they can also prevent you from academic burnout.

2 — Efficient Note-Taking

Never underestimate the benefits of going to class and taking notes (handwritten notes work better than laptop ones, by the way). When done right, note-taking becomes one of the most efficient academic strategies for students, making them remember and retain the material faster.

How to take notes like a boss:

• Develop your shorthand of symbols and abbreviations
• Leave lots of white space for later comments and fill the gaps
• Save often if taking notes on a laptop
• Write in point form, with every header concise and clear
• Know what to write down: unfamiliar facts, lists, the lecturer’s reasons for a particular theory or approach

3 — Organizing the Knowledge

Do you remember the learning cycle, its second and third steps, in particular? You attend class, take notes, and ask questions during and after it; you review your notes within 24 hours after class and fill in the gaps, if any.

That’s about organizing your knowledge to make it more meaningful and memorable.

An excellent strategy to try here is concept maps.

Organizing large amounts of information and data in a map allows you to visualize interconnections between different concepts for better understanding. All the information is displayed hierarchically with lines and arrows, helping you integrate new information into your existing knowledge.

4 — Organizing the Workspace

Identify the spot where you work best and with the fewest distractions. In the ideal world, it would be a separate study room with no people, traffic, noise, or interruptions. If you don’t have the whole room, think of organizing a corresponding corner in your apartment.

• Separate it from your relaxation area to “cheat” your brain and make it associate that corner with work
• Ensure that you study at a table (your cozy sofa is for relaxing!) and sit in a chair that supports your lower back.
• Eliminate digital distractions (Turn off notifications)
• Try noise-canceling headphones (If you’re okay with background music, choose soothing compositions without lyrics)
• Schedule specific study periods daily to signal your brain that it’s time to work

5 — Coaching

Choose a person who’ll be your academic coach during a course or a project. It can be your teacher, parent, friend, online tutor, or classmate — someone to keep you accountable during the learning process. Organize meetings with your instructor at a specified time to discuss gaps.

It’s okay to ask for help. Having someone to check your work or support you will motivate you to learn better and be a more productive and efficient student.

What Learning Strategy Do You Choose?

Active learning strategies for students focused on engagement and reflection offer numerous benefits and allow you to enhance critical thinking, boost retention, and improve academic performance. We did our best to share the best techniques you can apply to your learning process, and we hope they’ll make it more comfortable.

If you need assistance with writing tasks, you can ask our experts for help. Leave your “write my essay” request on this website, and we’ll contact you in the blink of an eye.

Photo by John Schnobrich from Pixabay