Now we're recording great.
We are in business.
This presentation is Strategies
for Studying and Retaining information.
We're going into finals
coming up in the next couple of weeks.
Hopefully you can use some of
these strategies to help you as
you prepare for your upcoming exams.
This slide is just in there
just in case you're not aware,
you may be already that we do
offer tutoring here on campus.
If you're interested in requesting a tutor,
you can click on this website.
It'll take you to some information for our math table,
writing table, meeting with specialists.
There is some information on this website.
What is memory?
Well memory is really important to learning and that's
probably pretty obvious but it helps us to recall,
and apply what we've learned.
It also prevents us from needing
to continually relearn material.
It offers a connection
to our past learning and experience.
Our ability to recall things that we've done,
things that we know,
it really helps us.
That's why it's so important particularly with learning,
because we don't want
to have to keep relearning things over and over again.
We want to get it from our short-term to
long-term memory so that we know it.
What is this just a little bit about memory.
Short-term memory is our ability
to store a small amount of information,
keep that information in our minds,
and have it readily available for a short period of time.
Some things we don't need to know for example,
I memorized the Zoom just now,
the Zoom ID because I have a pen but nothing to write
it down with so I quickly memorize the ID,
and rehearsed it a few times.
I went over to the computer, typed it in,
got it, its set up,
but I don't remember it now.
I don't need to remember it now, it's done.
Had I continued to rehearse it,
maybe made it into a song which is
something we're going to talk about in a little bit,
I might remember it tomorrow.
But if we don't really involve
ourselves with certain memories or information,
if we don't rehearse it,
if it's not actively maintained
that it's only going to last a
few seconds and maybe that's all we needed to use it for.
It's also commonly suggested that
our short-term memory really can hold
only seven items at once,
maybe plus or minus two.
Maybe as little as five as much as nine.
When we think about like phone numbers and
social security numbers that's how they're set up.
They're actually broken down
which we're going to talk about.
That's done purposefully so that we
can help remember them in chunks.
We're going to talk a lot about rehearsal,
and ways to approach
studying for exams and to remember other information,
because the goal is that we can move what we know and
what we're learning from
that short-term where we have it and it's gone,
to long term so it can be recalled later.
If you're studying for an exam,
some people will cram the night before,
and that might be okay for the next day for some people,
but the likelihood that that information is going
to go into long-term memory is low,
because it's not being rehearsed.
It's just you crammed
and crammed to dump what you know the next day,
but you're not really going through the process
to get it from short-term to long-term memory.
If you have an exam in three weeks
that is comprehensive and covers a lot of material,
if you crammed before you're likely going
to need to go over that material
again and study effectively because
you probably haven't remembered
everything that you crammed for.
It's not a really good strategy.
I always recommend that you review
notes and other information repeatedly,
until it is committed to memory.
There's some tricks and
tips that I'm going to share with you for how to do that.
Again, cramming is overload.
Beyond that short period of time,
it's probably not going to stay.
Maybe you're just planning for something you have to
present some information in
the morning and you cram the night before,
you really work and it's just a one and done,
then that might be okay if you don't need it later.
But when it comes to academics
a lot of the information we need,
and if you likely don't
have just one exam so if you're taking multiple classes,
cramming is just way too much.
You want to make sure that you're really
being a part of the information,
a part of the material,
and rehearsing it so that you will know it.
This is just a little chart. We get input.
That could be for example I looked at the screens,
saw that Zoom ID.
I took it for a
second it's lost now because I didn't attend to it.
If I attended to it, rehearsed it,
made it into a song,
then hopefully it will go to from,
it can stay in my short-term memory,
but if I'm really involved with it, I write it down,
I study it every day, in 10 days,
in two weeks, maybe even
next year I'll still remember that.
But over time it will be lost.
The ultimate goal for learning is to get
important information that we need to
know from our sensory memory,
to a short-term memory,
and then eventually to long-term memory.
Really the goal here now that we know some
of the basics about learning and memory,
what are we going to do with this information?
What are some strategies to help
us retain that information?
How do we rehearse it?
How do we manipulate it?
One of the recommendations that I always have,
first and foremost is how you study.
Where you study?
Because you need to be focused in
order to remember material and
to really rehearse that material
so that it can be remembered later,
you need to be in a situation where
you're not overloaded with
other sensory input or
other input or noises and things like that.
A lot of people will tell me that they fall
asleep when they read and I'll ask
them why do you read? Well I read in bed.
Well, that's very likely going to
happen because when we get into bed, we feel sleepy.
Not always. I read in bed at night sometimes,
but if that's your go-to to try to study,
and you're falling asleep then
it's definitely interfering with your recall.
I know if I'm reading
a chapter in a book and I'm starting to get
sleepy I'm reading that paragraph over and over and
then the next day I have to go back a page
or two because I don't remember the material.
Finding places to study;
now this guy looks like he's on his couch,
but maybe he needs to
be a little bit more
active or maybe he needs to take breaks,
move around, drink more of that water, stay alert.
Finding places to study either at home or on campus,
taking breaks, that's first and foremost.
Get yourself into a really good habit
of finding a location that works for you.
Reducing media.
Now, I love to listen to music,
and so listening to music might be fine.
But if you've got music, your phone there,
and you're on the computer and somebody's his TV on,
that's a lot of overload.
You may think that you're handling it,
but these are distractions.
Having all of that going on is not always a good thing.
It's okay to take breaks,
but I would say if you're going to
take a break from the material,
then go to the TV or whatever after
and use that as your break rather
than having it all going at once.
Remember you're trying to work with
your brain to help you retain and recall information.
Social media, that's another thing
that I would say if you can try
to use that as another break.
If you get alerts on your phone
that somebody put a Facebook posts
or Instagram or something,
you're going to be distracted
and it's going to interfere.
I'm not saying you should never look at that,
but trying to make sure that you're really focused on
the material is going to help you with future recall.
One of the things that's really important if you
take anything from this presentation today,
it's that we remember in people,
remember information that is meaningful.
Meaningful meaning it's something we can relate to,
it's either a story or a song.
It might be something funny.
It might be a visual.
It might be for
example there's a girl on
the screen here and she's laughing.
You might remember that.
If I were to say to you what are
some important things about mnemonics?
You might remember that
there's a girl laughing and you say, well,
if you make it into something funny,
you'll remember it because you remember that girl.
We remember things that are meaningful rather than
just random information that doesn't have a connection.
Mnemonics which you may already
do or know about, are off it.
They're either like a word or a phrase or a poem to
help people remember information, particularly lists.
They're easy to remember constructs,
and it can stick with you for life in some ways.
Because again we remember personal, humorous,
or otherwise meaningful information
than meaningless sequences.
Here are a couple of examples.
I did this for nursing students,
which is, hence we have a rice bag here.
Now I did not know about the Great Lakes.
That there was a mnemonic for this but now I know homes.
I would always forget Lake Huron.
I would never like if you were to ask me
the lakes I don't know that I would remember Huron.
But now I will,
because I've done this presentation
and I found this mnemonic,
and the other ones I'm familiar with.
Now if I have to remember
the Great Lakes I just need to think of the word homes,
and then I can easily remember the different lakes.
Nursing. I've been working a lot
with nursing students on some of this and there are
a lot of mnemonics for
the medical profession because there's
so much information that they need to remember.
I found this, I'm not a nurse,
but this is one thing that they have to remember.
Like if there's a sprain,
if somebody sprains their ankle,
they'll say, ''Rest it,
ice it,'' for compression and
elevation and that's how they remember that.
I will remember that now because I've done this.
I've gone over it a few times and I'm going to
remember this rice tag and what it stands for.
We've taken otherwise meaningless information
and made it into something that we can help
remember and you can create your own.
There are ways that you can create
your own mnemonics making
it into a sentence or something
fun with whatever you have to memorize.
This is one that's been around for a long time.
ROYGBIV, the colors of the rainbow.
Easy to remember what they are.
If you're not familiar with that one, there's other ones.
Did I talk about this one?
Let me see. Sorry about the scrolling.
I'm going to go back up, sorry for the scrolling.
This is one that I learned very
young and ROYGBIV and you just remember it.
Another one is PEMDAS,
which is the math sequences and parentheses,
it's like for math and
that's one that I learned as
please excuse my dear Aunt Sally,
but they call it PEMDAS now.
It's another example of an easy way
to remember information by making it meaningful.
I know that we have one person
on Zoom and one person in the room,
so I'm not going to ask you to out loud on.
What I'm going to do is show you some letters
and what I would like you to do is think about
them and then try to
remember them when I pull the blank screen up.
I'm only going to show them to you for a minute.
Like not even a minute. That's tough.
I didn't show it to you for that long.
Even if I show it again,
you might have some of it,
but what if I were to show it to you this way?
Was that easier?
I know I don't have
let see if i have anything in the chat.
Yeah. It was easier.
I'm getting them in the chat.
These are the same letters,
but they don't mean anything to us.
I didn't really look at
exactly how much time I was showing them to you,
but this is information we can remember.
These are acronyms.
You see this and you're going to remember
this and you might even remember these tomorrow.
Because if I were to
ask someone, do you remember what they were?
Maybe not all four of them,
but you might remember the first three
because they're really common.
This is called chunking and
it's a way to help us remember information.
Again, phone numbers.
If you were to say what's your phone number,
I guarantee you got whatever your area code is here,
so you might say 315-298-7761.
I'm just making that up. We actually do that on purpose.
We pause so that we can remember it easier.
It's easier to remember them in groups.
Once we know our area code, we've got that.
Sometimes people will tell me their phone number
and if I hear it's 315, I just throw that.
I just put the, I already know that.
That's ingrained in my memory.
I've lived in Central New York pretty much my whole life.
I need to only focus on
the other seven numbers to remember a phone number.
Social Security is done the exact same way and
people will pause 123-45-6789.
Did I do that right? 3, 6,
7, 8, 9,
10 it's 10 numbers,
but that's done on purpose.
One really cool memorization strategy is to
use flashcards and you can
also put some mnemonic on some flashcards.
I recommend if you're going to do a definition on
one side and the term on the
other that you make them colorful,
maybe add a picture,
anything to help make that information stick.
This is a little snippet of
information about how making sure that you're
using both sides and
then I would review even the ones that
you already know because the more
repetitious you can make your studying,
the more likely you'll remember it.
But then if you're stuck on some
maybe put that in the no pile.
The yes, I've studied these,
I've got these the yes,
the ones I'm like, I got it this time,
the last time I didn't sort them
out and making sure that
you're repeatedly looking at them.
Again, using visuals, using color.
We remember all of that.
We remember that information.
Some other strategies you can use.
These are some visualization tricks, silly images,
memorizing information as mental images or chaining.
Here is a mental chain.
Let's take the one down here,
the first four words are shoe,
piano, tree and pencil.
If I were to just read all of these and say,
tell me what they are.
Maybe right now you could if I went,
because you've looked at them a few times,
you'll probably miss some.
But unless you look at this over and over again,
there might only be one or two that stand out.
Maybe it's because you saw pizza and you were thinking,
I remember thinking I had pizza last night.
Remember, the pizza was on that slide or I love
basketball and I saw that.
But another way to help remember it and keep it in
your memory is to find some weird, funny image.
Even if you can't draw,
just do the best you can.
A piano with shoes on it,
tree had pianos in
it and there was a pencil stuck in a tree.
While regardless,
when you take this away, you're going to remember,
I just remember shoes on a piano,
something about a tree and there was like a pencil.
Now you've got the first four down.
You could do the same thing you could do,
the dog was eating pizza.
Well, I was reading my book on the bus.
There's another four that you
could do. Anything you can do.
You're trying to use your brain
to remember things that are
meaningful, things that are fun.
You might not have to memorize this list,
but there might be other terms.
Biology has a lot of terms, the sciences do.
Psychology might, so try to make
it into something meaningful.
I can't say enough about repetition.
Can you remind me of your first name?
Luwanda.
Luwanda is in the room with me and I don't
know if you saw it when I was trying to remember
that ID for Zoom,
I was saying it, I was repeating it,
and I didn't want any distractions.
If somebody had come into the room,
I probably would have lost it.
But I set it over and
then I punched it in and it was good.
That helped me to get from my computer to
the other computer to type in the Zoom link, the Zoom ID.
But if you want to remember it beyond that,
you need to more than once repeat it out loud,
create those flashcards, make it into something
funny so you can use it later while you're studying.
Repetition helps everyone even doing things.
If you've said like,
here's another example,
this room is set up so that I can have somebody in Fulton
being on this an online person
which we have and then somebody in Auburn.
I haven't been down here to set
this up in like a month and a half.
Now, I'm here and I had to remind myself,
it didn't come easy to me.
But if I was doing this every day,
it would be I have learned it and it would be in great.
Maybe if I don't do this for
another two years where I've
just set up all this technology,
I might need the cheat sheet again that they have here.
It is okay to sometimes have to,
everything isn't riding a bike.
But the more we do something and see something,
the more likely we're going to remember.
I'm Dr. Grella,
I should have said that right from the get-go.
I am the Accessibility Specialist here at the college,
so I work in Auburn and Fulton
and I'm really appreciate if you need to contact me,
my information is here
and this will be recorded and put on.
It is recording, so it'll be on
the website and I'm going to just stop
the recording now and see if there's any questions.