Title: Efficiency In Learning Type: Teaching, learning, humor Date Published: 2006-09-28 Can be purchased in Volume 1

     Every year I give my new students a lecture about learning. I tell them I will try to give them only the homework necessary for them to understand the concepts, and not so much that it just becomes busy work. That way they can still have some sort of social life. In addition, I share a few ideas that may help them to study. I will therefore address this column to all students and others interested in learning.
     As a student, I paid my own way through college. I always worked one or two part time jobs, and, to save money, I crammed as many as 21 and a half credits into a semester. The half credit was varsity wrestling, which required 4 hours of training per day. A normal load is 12 to 16 credits, therefore, between work and lots of classes, I had to learn to study efficiently.
     Math, the subject I teach, is often many students' nemesis. Students tend to procrastinate taking these courses as long as possible and then tend to put off doing the homework once they are in the class. This results in even more frustration. I tell the students they need to take courses they dislike first and similar ones as close together as possible. This will help them remember what they have already learned. In addition, there are things they can do to better understand the material and complete their homework more efficiently.
     Each of us has probably taken a class where we sit through the lecture and we understand what is being taught. Then time passes and, when we finally sit down to do our homework, we realize that we are clueless about it and can't even figure out our own notes. Some students wonder, at that point, if they ever truly did understand it.
     The problem is not actually one of understanding. We learn from psychology that there are two levels of memory: long term and short term. As a former computer science teacher, I often describe this as R.A.M. and hard drive. When a person first learns something, it is in short-term memory (R.A.M.). A person's short-term memory can only hold a certain amount. This means that, as time goes on, it is replaced by other information and it will be as if they never even attended that class. In order to lock in what they learned into long-term memory (hard drive) a person needs to practice it immediately.
     I suggest to my students that, if they have a class they struggle in, they need to block out an hour immediately after the class to do the homework. This will help them to process the information to their long-term memory while they still understand it. By doing this, they will learn better, deeper, faster, and more efficiently. I have found, in my own studies, that, by following this advice, I could cut my homework time to about a third of what it took before.
     I have now done my part to give you a social life. The rest is up to you. Of course, I realize that no matter what I do, some of you won't have a social life, but you can't say I didn't try.