My College Experience – DC SALS Assignment

The learning strategy workshop I chose to complete was study strategies. This workshop

allowed me to understand the process of effective learning and 6 successful techniques to use

when studying. It also went over what makes for an ideal study environment and that studying

with classmates assists in better learning.

I would rate the effectiveness of the study strategies workshop 5 out of 5. If you are

someone who struggles to study successfully, then this workshop is very helpful. It outlines

effective strategies to use when studying, for the information to be stored in your long-term

memory and easily retrieved during learning evaluations. Moreover, this workshop provides

many study tools to use to help you organize the content and exercise recalling the information.

After completion of this workshop, it will allow you to evaluate your own study techniques and

how to plan an effective study schedule. You will recognize the strategies you should continue to

use and eliminate the ones that are not useful. Overall, this workshop effectively explains key

elements for successful studying.

Before I began the study strategies workshop, I thought I knew much about study habits

already, for I have been a student for many years. However, participating in the workshop

allowed me to learn more effective study techniques. Some of the strategies mentioned in the

module, I am already successful in using such as, spaced practice, dual coding, concrete

examples, and retrieval practice. Although, there were a couple tools that I did not know were

helpful: interleaving and elaboration. I learned that interleaving is alternating between different

courses or topics while studying. This technique allows students to grasp and learn the material

better. Elaboration is when you expand on the content given to you. Learning these extra study
strategies will allow me to continue to study successfully and dig deeper into the information I

am learning. I often don’t use study tools and simply read the information from my notes.

However, I learned that creating these tools will allow me to stay organized and exercise

information retrieval more effectively. Accordingly, the workshop taught me that different study

tools can be used to present different information. For example, cue cards are best to learn

definitions, and creating a mind map is best to show how topics are related. Moreover,

throughout my education I always thought studying individually would be more efficient and

group studying would only lead to distractions. However, I learned that studying with classmates

opens me up to different ways of thinking and new ideas. It would also ensure I understand the

information by explaining it to others. To conclude, I found the study strategies workshop was

beneficial, and I learned many additional effective study techniques and tools to incorporate in

my study sessions.