The Return to Study Handbook

Study Skills for Mature, Distance, and Workplace Learners

Chloe Burroughs

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749496913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

Have you learned how to learn? Written especially for professional or distance learners, part-time or mature students, and formal CPD qualification candidates, The Return to Study Handbook will teach you how to study effectively, ace your ongoing education, and get the grades you need to advance in your career. Whether you need to balance your learning with full or part-time work, or overcome the 'mindset gremlins' stemming from a negative school experience, this book will empower you to effectively manage your own learning and provide you with the full range of mental and practical skills you need to succeed.Packed with practical tools, tips, exercises, case studies and strategies, plus the author's own inspirational story, The Return to Study Handbook not only covers the study skills necessary for any student to be successful - such as effective note-taking; exam technique; and essay writing - but it specifically addresses relevant topics for non-traditional students. With advice on recommended technology aids; handling procrastination and distractions; dealing with overwhelm and avoiding burnout; managing distance learning; and overcoming the mental and emotional barriers of past experiences, this book will guide you through everything you need to achieve the grades and career you want.

Part One

Getting ready for further study

01

Independent learning

Studying at university or college, or in a professional context, requires a different set of skills than studying at school. At school, your teachers are largely responsible for your learning. They will remind you of upcoming due dates and may even be lenient if you miss them; if they see you’re struggling, they will step in and try to help you. They will speak up if they think you’re not reaching your full potential. Most of my school reports conveyed the same message: ‘Chloe has great potential, she just needs to stop chatting and work a bit harder.’

After compulsory education, however, this accountability shifts almost completely to the student – you become responsible for your own learning and education. Your tutors will be assigned a greater number of students and your face time with them decreases – for distance learners, you may have no face time with your tutors at all. Some courses may have 10 or more hours a week of teaching, whereas others may not even have one hour a week. If you don’t put the effort in, your tutor is not going to encourage you to work harder for your own success and future. If you want help at university or college you have to ask for it.

Sink or swim

The shift in responsibility itself is not really the problem. The problem is that it’s not talked about. Your first day of higher education doesn’t include a sit down where you’re told that you’re now responsible for your own learning. No other kind of learning is handled this way, really – picture yourself learning to swim as a child. You start your swimming journey with a parent near you and you wear armbands to keep you afloat and safe. You’re told that the aim is to swim independently, and you work up to this goal slowly. The air is gradually let out of the armbands and soon you feel ready to try swimming without them. But in higher education, becoming an independent learner is not this gradual, supported process. The armbands are taken off without warning and without you being taught how to swim first.

Some get over the shock quickly, or take to the new environment immediately; after a few test strokes, they find a rhythm and are off. But not everyone finds it so easy. Maybe you start panicking. You go under and pop back up in a flail of limbs. Water is splashing in your face and you feel alone. You look up and see someone walking along the edge of the pool and you shout to them, ‘Help! I don’t know how to swim!’. They reply, with a look of confusion on their face, ‘Why not? Swimming is easy. Other people know how to swim.’

Some students adapt to higher education more easily than others. They don’t need to be told about the responsibility shift, and they develop independent learning skills almost subconsciously. However, for other students, like learning to swim without armbands, adjusting to the demands of university or college is more difficult. I was a flailing, panicking would-be swimmer and student. It took me until I was 20 to learn how to swim, and it took me until the end of my first year of university before I started feeling more confident and had developed independent learning skills.

For those students who don’t adjust well to the shift, higher education is harder than it needs to be. Maybe you enrolled in your course, nervous because you didn’t do great at school. You really want to achieve a degree… but your excitement is laced with doubts. You start studying but feel unsteady; you’re not sure how you should be studying. Your motivation drops off as you quickly become overwhelmed. Your doubts are becoming realized and you worry that you’re not good enough, that you’re just an imposter and that everyone is ahead of you.

If this is you: don’t panic! Those feelings are almost certainly not true. What is true, though, is that this vital transition isn’t talked about, and we are not given any guidance and support to walk through it. Unlike swimming lessons, we don’t have the luxury of time to learn to become an effective, independent student; every day, week, month we spend using ineffective strategies costs us energy, money and grades.

The solution is two-fold. Firstly, you must become responsible for your own learning and success and secondly, you need to learn how to develop the skills to become an independent learner.

Study skills can be learned

A client came to me earlier this year because his essay grades were low. Through working with him, I discovered he struggled to get his thoughts down on paper, to turn his ideas into coherent arguments. It wasn’t that he lacked the knowledge, talent, or understanding; he could talk to me for hours about his subject and the theories he’d been learning, but this wasn’t translating into good essay scores. After teaching him how to write essays, his potential unlocked and his essay grades have climbed since. Just like him, if you know the best way to approach each study problem, you will be able to achieve the grades your hard work deserves.

Independent learning skills

If you want to achieve high grades, as we’ve seen, you need to take responsibility for your own study skills and learning. This means being an independent learner: a student who takes responsibility for their own education. Becoming an independent learner will help you deal with the shift in responsibility in higher education and master the study skills you need to flourish.

In my experience, there are five essential skills of every successful independent learner. In later chapters we’ll dive into each study skill in more depth and look at the key strategies you need to know, but for now, here’s a quick overview.

1 Motivation and self-belief

Every student (me included) has days where they don’t want to study. It’s easy to sit on on the sofa and put off studying until you ‘feel like it’. But that inspiration may never come! An independent learner must discover how to motivate themselves, so they can study even when they don’t really want to. You don’t have to be Hermione Granger-style motivated all the time, because you can do great work even when you’re unmotivated. In Chapter 6 we’ll look at lots of ways of boosting your motivation so you can get the job done.

An independent learner must develop confidence and belief in themselves, their abilities and their power to change. Remember: our past grades don’t dictate our future grades – and our past mistakes don’t have to be repeated. Over time, it’s possible to develop a growth mindset: the belief that your intelligence is malleable and can be increased through effort and the right study strategies. We’ll look more at this in Chapter 5.

2 Organization and time management

Organization is a bit of a dirty word for some people, an unobtainable goal. But don’t worry – I’m not asking you to become super-efficient overnight! Instead, try these three things to become an independent learner, and reduce panic and overwhelm in your studies.

• Your due dates should never surprise you. Don’t rely on your memory or other students reminding you of deadlines, as this is a sure-fire way to achieve lower grades than you want. Instead, record all important tutorial, project and assignment dates in a way you will use.
• Independent learners plan their study time holistically, taking into account their other commitments. Spend some time each week looking at both your workload and your schedule. Work backwards from any due dates, to make sure you fit in enough study sessions to submit work that makes you proud.
• Organize your physical and digital to save time, energy and your sanity. Spend an hour setting up a simple, digital folder structure and creating a physical system of folders and notebooks for your handwritten and printed materials (more on this in Chapter 7).

3 Problem solving and initiative

Throughout your studies there are going to be approximately 2,852 instances where you get stuck and don’t know how to unstick yourself to move on. Maybe you’ll come across a tricky concept you can’t grasp, or perhaps your essay question will fly over your head and you won’t know where to start. Taking initiative is an important skill for independent learners, and it’s even more vital if you’re also a distance learner, when getting help from a tutor is not as simple as raising a hand in class or walking to their office to have a chat.

During a recent study skills training, I asked the attendees to share what they do when they meet a problem in their studies. Here are their suggestions, to give you some ideas:

• take a break and go for a short walk;
• search on Google for resources that could help;
• sleep on it and try again tomorrow;
• search YouTube for tutorial videos;
• try to explain the concept in simple terms to someone who doesn’t study your subject;
• discuss your problem with a fellow student;
• contact your tutor and ask for help.

If you try to solve the problem yourself and can’t, it’s time to ask for help. Don’t waste time sitting in confusion; reach out to your tutors and see what can be done. Some people don’t like asking for help because, yes, there’s a chance your tutor will tell you they can’t answer a specific question. But there’s also a chance they can give you the exact piece of advice you need to get unstuck and move forward.

4 Self-development focus

You cannot grow and improve unless you’re willing to change. If you want higher grades, or you want to achieve the same grades in less time and with less stress, then you need to test out new study techniques to change your skills and habits. An independent learner is willing to switch up how they study, and understa...