Learning strategies for student college chapter 1-4

“Motivation and Learning Strategies for College     Success “ Second edition . This book written by Myron H. Dembo  ,  consist 361  page , 11 chapters .

Chapter 1 explain about Academic Self-Management

In this chapter , explain about academic self-managament . Do you know what is academic self-managament ? This is several point that explain ini this chapter.

WHAT IS ACADEMIC SELF-MANAGEMENT?

The word management is a key term in understanding successful learners. They self-manage or control the factors influencing their learning. They establish optimum conditions for learning and remove obstacles that interfere with their learning. Educators use a variety of terms to describe these students (e.g., self-regulated, self-directed, strategic, and active). No matter what term is used, the important factor is that these students find a way to learn. It does not matter if the instructor is a poor lecturer, the textbook is confusing, the test is difficult, the room is noisy, or if multiple exams are scheduled for the same week, successful learners find a way to excel.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE? Some student fail to recognize the differences between high

school and college learning during the first wee in college

One of the major differences in the transition from high school to college classrooms is the change from a teacher-directed to a student-directed environment. In high school, many teachers tend to guide students’ learning by telling them what, when, and how to learn. For example, when assignments are given, high school teachers frequently help students manage the tasks necessary to complete the assignment, such as requiring outlines or drafts of papers. In college, students are on their own. They can ask questions and obtain more information about an assignment, but rarely does a college instructor monitor students’ progress. In college, students are expected to manage their own learning. Another difference between high school and college is that high school teachers often spend considerable time attempting to motivate students to learn, whereas college instructors generally expect students to be self-motivated. Although students are told about the demands of college, many freshmen experience culture shock when they enter learning environments that differ from their past experiences.

HOW CAN I MANAGE MY ACADEMIC BEHAVIOR?

The following are major components of academic self-management or self-regulation.

1.    Motivation

A number of important motivational self-management techniques can be used to develop and maintain these important beliefs. The first is goal setting. Educational research indicates that high achievers report using goal setting more frequently and more consistently than low achievers.  A second motivational self-management technique is self-verbalization, or self-talk. This procedure takes many forms. For example, verbal reinforcement or praise can be used following desired behavior. You simply tell yourself things like: “Great! I did it!” or “I’m doing a great job concentrating on my readings!” Reinforce yourself either covertly (to yourself) or aloud. Another motivational self-management technique is arranging or imagining rewards or punishments for success or failure at an academic task. Students who control their motivation by giving themselves rewards and punishments outperform students who do not use this control technique.

2.    Methods of Learning

Another term for methods of learning is learning strategies. Learning strategies are the methods students use to acquire information. Higher achieving students use more learning strategies than do lower achieving students. Underlining, summarizing, and outlining are examples of learning strategies.

3.    Use of Time

Why does time management appear to be so important in determining academic success? One explanation is that use of time impacts self-management. If a student has difficulty dealing with time, he or she ends up doing what is most urgent when deciding which task to do first. If a paper is the next task that needs to be done, one works on the paper; if an exam is the next challenge, one studies for the exam. Little time is spent on any long-term planning to consider the importance of different tasks and how they can best be completed.

4.   Physical and Social Environment

Another important aspect of self-management is the ability of learners to restructure their physical and social environments to meet their needs. Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1986) found that high achievers reported greater use of environmental restructuring and were more likely to seek help from others than were low-achieving students. For the most part, environmental restructuring refers to locating places to study that are quiet or not distracting. Although this task may not appear difficult to attain, it poses many problems for students who either select inappropriate environments initially or cannot control the distractions once they occur.

5.    Performance

The final factor that you can manage is your academic performance. Whether writing a paper, completing a test, or reading a book, you can learn how to use self-management processes to influence the quality of your performance. One of the important functions of a goal is to provide an opportunity for you to detect a discrepancy between it and your present performance. This analysis enables you to make corrections in the learning process. When you learn to monitor your work under different learning conditions (e.g., test taking and studying), you are able to determine what changes are needed in your learning and studying behavior. When you learn how to monitor and control your own performance, you become your own coach or mentor. You can practice skills on your own, critique your own performance, and make the necessary changes to meet your goals at a high level of success.

Chapter 2 explain aboutUnderstanding Learning and Memory

1.    There are seven flaws in human memory: transience, absentmindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence.

Transience refers to the situation when individuals fail to remember a fact or idea. It is a weakening or loss of memory over time. A second flaw in our memory is called absent-mindedness. It involves the breakdown between attention and memory. It often occurs when we are preoccupied with distracting concerns like placing sunglasses down at a friend’s home and forgetting to take them when you leave. Although this type of memory problem occurs more often in older adults, it is prevalent as well in individuals of all ages. A third flaw is called blocking. It is the unsuccessful search for information that we may be desperately trying to retrieve, such as the name of an attractive woman or man we met at a party the previous night. A fourth flaw is called misattribution. It involves assigning a memory to the wrong source or incorrectly remembering that someone told you something that you actually read about in a newspaper. You are sure that a friend told you something, but find that he or she never mentioned a thing about the topic. We often see this flaw on television programs in cases of mistaken eyewitness identification. A fifth flaw is called suggestibility. It refers to memories that are implanted because of leading questions, comments, or suggestions. Numerous examples of this flaw are special concerns in legal situations where suggestive questioning by law enforcement officials can lead to errors in eyewitness identification. This flaw also has been identified in cases of child abuse where psychotherapists have elicited memories of traumatic events that never occurred. A sixth flaw is called bias. It involves the editing or changing of previous experiences based on what we now feel rather than what happened in the past. The last flaw in our memory is persistence. It refers to remembering what we would prefer to omit from our memory. Have you ever had problems sleeping because you can’t stop thinking about a poor grade on an examination or bad interview you had? I bet you can still remember a certain negative experience in your life and how you recalled the experience repeatedly in the days and weeks after it occurred, even though you would have liked to forget it.The information processing system is a model that is used to identify  how individuals obtain, transform, store, and apply information. It comprises the short-term sensory store, working memory, and the long-term memory.

2.  Learning involves getting information into long-term memory.

Psychologists provide many different theories and explanations of human learning. One way to understand how information may be acquired or lost is to understand the information-processing system .

Short term memory

information enters the short-term sensory store (STSS). Information in the STSS is stored briefly until it can be attended to by the working memory (WM). Everything that can be seen, heard, or smelled is stored in the STSS, but it only lasts for a matter of seconds before it is forgotten. Many of the stimuli humans experience never get into our WM because we do not attend to them. We are constantly barraged with stimuli from our environment. For example, by the time an individual wakes up, gets dressed, and walks or drives to class, he or she observes hundreds, or perhaps thousands of objects that cannot be recalled. If you drove to class today, do you remember the color or make of the car next to which you were parked? Do you remember the student who sat next to you in your first class? What did he or she wear? If you found the person attractive or interesting, you may be able to answer these questions, because you may have been attentive to such details. However, the fact is that we are not attentive to most of what we see or hear in our daily lives. If you have not attended to information, there is little concern about retention or retrieval, because no information will have been acquired. When you attend a lecture and your attention fades in and out, you will fail to recall some of the important information presented by the professor. This is why it may be important for you to improve your attention.

Long-Term Memory Long-term memory stores all the information we possess but are not immediately using. It is generally assumed that storage of information in the LTM is permanent. That is, the information does not fade from LTM, nor is it ever lost except perhaps as a result of senility or some other physical malfunction. Information enters the LTM through the WM. Although information must be repeated or rehearsed to stay in working memory, it must be classified, organized, connected, and stored with information already in LTM if it is to be easily retrieved at a later time. It takes time and effort to move information into long-term storage.

Chapter 3 Explain about Understanding Motivation

        Many of my students frequently state in class or in written assignments: “I have no motivation” or “I need to get motivated.” Unfortunately, I find that many students do not understand the meaning of these statements. Actually, everyone is motivated. Educational researchers have found that many different patterns of beliefs and behaviors can limit academic success. WHAT IS MOTIVATION AND WHAT FACTORS INFLUENCE IT? Student motivation in the college classroom involves three interactive components (adapted from Pintrich, 1994). The first component is the personal and sociocultural factors that include individual characteristics, such as the attitudes and values students bring to college based on prior personal, family, and cultural experiences. The second component is the classroom environment factors that pertain to instructional experiences in different courses. The third component is internal factors or students’ beliefs and perceptions. Internal factors are influenced by both personal and sociocultural factors and classroom environmental experiences. Current research on motivation indicates that internal factors (i.e, students’ beliefs and perceptions) are key factors in understanding behavior. Most of the attention in the chapter is given to the internal factors of motivation. I begin this section with a discussion of what behaviors determine students’ motivation and then discuss how personal and sociocultural, classroom environmental, and internal factors influence motivated behavior.

Motivated behavior

If you want to understand your own motivation, you might begin by evaluating your behavior in the following three areas:

• Choice of behavior

• Level of activity and involvement

• Persistence and management of effort

Personal and Sociocultural Factors

The attitudes, beliefs, and experiences students bring to college based on their personal and sociocultural experiences influence their motivation and behavior, and even their persistence or departure from college. You also are influenced by your family and cultural experiences. Family characteristics such as socioeconomic levels, parental educational levels, and parental expectations can influence motivation and behavior. Here is a list of some other student characteristics that can influence adjustment and involvement in college (adapted from Jalomo, 1995):

•Married students with family obligations

•Single parents

•Students who never liked high school or who were rebellious in

high school

•Students who were not involved in academic activities or stu

dent groups during high school

•Students who are afraid or feel out of place in the mainstream college culture

•Students who have a hard time adjusting to the fast pace of college

•Students who lack the financial resources to take additional courses or participate in campus-based academic and social activities in college

Classroom Environmental

Factors Many classroom environmental factors influence student motivation. These include types of assignments given, instructor behavior, and instructional methods.

Internal Factors

 Students’ goals, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions determine their motivated behavior and, in turn, academic performance. For example, if students value a task and believe they can master it, they are more likely to use different learning strategies, try hard, and persist until completion of the task. If students believe that intelligence changes over time, they are more likely to exhibit effort in difficult courses than students who believe intelligence is fixed.

Chapter 4 explain about Goal Setting

WHY IS GOAL SETTING IMPORTANT?

Goal setting is a planning process and is an important aspect of self-management. This process puts meaning in people’s lives, helps them achieve their dreams and ambitions, and sets up positive expectations for achievements. Students who set goals and develop plans to achieve them take responsibility for their own lives. They do not wait for parents or teachers to instruct them as to what they should be doing with their lives. Unfortunately, many students fail to take responsibility for personal goal setting.

WHAT ARE THE STEPS IN THE GOAL-SETTING PROCESS?

Step 1: Identifying and Defining the Goal

Individuals set goals throughout their lives. As they attain one goal, they often identify another. In fact, one of the major ways individuals seek happiness is through goal attainment. When some students are asked what goal they would like to attain, they often mention being happy. Keep in mind that happiness is not a goal, it is a feeling or state of mind that occurs as the result of goal attainment. As you set each of your goals, you want to make sure they are SMART goals (Smith, 1994): Specific, Measurable, Action-Oriented, Realistic, and Timely.

Step 2: Generating and Evaluating Alternative Plans

Now that you know how to write a goal, let’s move on to the second step in the process—determining how you are going to attain your goal. By asking these questions, the student begins to think about alternative ways to attain the goal and the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy. My point is that one constantly has to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of one strategy over another.

Step 3: Making Implementation Plans

In Step 1, you learned why it is necessary to be specific in writing a goal. It also is important for your plan to be specific so you know exactly what needs to be done to achieve your goal. One way to develop a plan is to identify each of the necessary tasks that must be completed and the date by which the tasks will be accomplished. Setting deadlines for each task is helpful in determining that you continue to make progress toward your goal.

Step 4: Implementing the Plan The first three steps in the goal-setting process are planning steps. Step 4 requires you to put the plan into operation by completing each of the planned activities. Check your progress as you implement each task. Do not hesitate to make changes in your plan if you find that.

Step 5: Evaluating Your Progress In Step 5, you will evaluate your plans and progress. Ask yourself the following questions after you have attained your goal or when you begin to realize that your plan is not working effectively. If you do not attain your goal, you can evaluate what went wrong. Evaluation can help you rethink your strategy and determine another way to reach your goal.

From first chapter until fourth chapter , this book give easy explanation about their content . This book very recommended for college student . This book also give the example in our daily life.