With the advent of the pandemic, studying from home is the new normal. For most students used to the classroom, this is quite a challenging task. Most of them report that they can’t concentrate enough when learning from home.
The home environment is not conducive for the majority of students used to studying with their peers. There are just so many distractions at home or in a dorm.
Keeping all this in mind, what are the best ways to maximize your efficiency at home? The tips described below are the answer.
Maintain a Proper Sleep Schedule
With social media and Netflix trending, most students are tempted to go to bed late. And often, the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep gets disturbed by ill-timed alarms. REM sleep is essential because it stimulates specific brain areas. This stimulation is critical in learning, concentration, or retaining memories.
Thus, one of the good ways to ensure REM sleep doesn’t get disturbed is to analyze your sleep cycle. Alarm clock applications usually come with such a feature these days. These alarms will wake one at the moment of least REM sleep within a specified interval before the alarm. This feature helps in improving cognitive abilities like concentration and focus.
Baby Steps
Learning anything is a lot like a chemical reaction. Anything done in a giant step in a short time is, more often than not, reversible. And so is studying. Cramming large volumes of information in short durations is counterproductive.
When it comes to memorizing huge volumes of information, everything depends on your efforts. One can easily forget material due to minimal practice and attempts to remember the information from a whole course at once. So, studying should resemble an irreversible chemical reaction. As they say, “slow and steady wins the race.”
The best way to improve when studying from home is consistency. Consistent studying of small volumes of information should happen daily. Learning should spread over a long duration of time, accounting for several days or more. This dedication ensures the retention of knowledge as opposed to pulling an all-nighter.
Set Realistic Goals
Smart students are always one step ahead. Often, the major reason why students resort to rewrite essay is a looming deadline that they can’t keep up with. It’s very critical to plan ahead and make sure you allocate enough time for assignments. Putting the study aside till the very last night often results in bad grades.
Create a To-Do List
Before setting to study, it would be of immense help to envision what you have decided to learn. Throughout the day, jot down the list of topics set for study. But most importantly, note the sequence of the lessons you want to study. It is best to start with subjects that are similar and then branch out to the differing ones.
For instance, study subjective theories together. As opposed to mixing them up with mathematical/practical syllabus. It will also be helpful to start with topics one finds easy and then move on to the complex subjects. Confidence boost will develop from finishing off the more straightforward lessons. This gradual progression enables you to tackle the problematic areas later.
Doodle
Yes, doodle, draw, scribble. Whatever helps in visualizing a problematic concept. Certain subjects like human anatomy are often challenging to visualize. Hence, it is best to draw it to learn it. At home, students can have all the creative liberty needed.
Use a Constructive Visual Aid
Students can watch videos of concepts, use flashcards, and use 3D models for understanding. These visual aids are helpful. Especially for scientific subjects like medicine, architecture, or engineering. It’s best to see videos of the concept studied. If it’s anatomy, you need to understand shape, structure, and function, for example.
Customize a Blueprint of Understanding
Students can use mnemonics to learn a set of data. Mnemonics help students to remember a lot of information through small cues. Devise a phrase to string an entire list of things. The same way they taught you in middle school how to memorize the planets.
Summarize
Recapitulation is one of the essential steps to recall vast volumes of information. The student can write down all the keywords and then associate each keyword to a set of contextual understanding needed. In this way, several dozens of pages could get reduced to a few like a map of keywords. This type of learning is a subjective experience though.
Science of Reductionism
Every concept is capable of getting broken down to its basic fundamental core values. One of the efficient ways to do this is by using analogies. Try to find and understand the similarities in the mechanics of any process. Whether it’s medicine, engineering, or architecture, there is always a similarity.
For example, biological mutation is like spontaneous radiation. Unpredictable. The same applies to the design philosophy of human anatomy or engineering and architecture. All these fields have a fundamental commonality in the underlying philosophy.
The goal is to understand how to use more than one approach to any concept. The student can visualize subjective descriptions with dimensions, ratios, geometry, and measurements.
Use of Technology
The year is 2021. Technology has been integrated to a reasonable extent into traditional studying. Today, there are countless applications available online, from simple flashcards to structural design in 3D. There is no longer a need to pore over several dozen heavy tomes.
Digital versions of all books are available. One could access all information on one’s mobile phone or a tablet. Moreover, the internet is a source of free knowledge. And it also teems with quiz applications one can use to test their skills.
Summary
Learning from many sources is certainly of utmost importance. And schooling is only the tip of the iceberg. With all the right resources in place, students always learn much better from home. So, explore all the possibilities to choose what is best for you.
