Study Habits and Grades
I strongly encourage you to carefully
read this insightful advice. It was written by Dr. Michael W. Passer (your
textbook author) and was based on data collected here at the
I would like every
student in our class to learn the material well, be engaged, and get a good
grade in the course. That's why I'm providing you with the information below.
Please take a few minutes to read it.
1.
So, What Else is New? Psych 101 is a 5-credit science course. The general rule
at the U.W. is that for each credit a course it worth, the workload (e.g.,
reading, studying) outside of class should be approximately 2 hours per week
for the average student. So, for a 5-credit, course, this translates to 10
hours a week outside of class-time for the "typical" student.
Of course, doing well is not just a matter of putting in hours. It involves
understanding what you read and learning it. For example, in addition to
material from lectures, the first exam will cover about 130 pages from the
textbook (i.e., actual content pages). These pages contain explanations of key
terms and concepts, descriptions of theories and research studies, factual
conclusions about behavior, and applications of psychological knowledge. To
learn this material well I strongly suggest that you:
a) get ahead on the readings. Try to have all your readings finished 3
to 4 days before each exam. This reduces the time pressure, anxiety, and mental
fatigue that results from last minute "cramming."
b) read carefully, highlight or underline
key information, and focus on understanding it. Don't skim or "speed
read". Also, the first time you read a chapter, don't
try to memorize the key information. Once again, at this
stage read to identify and understand the key material.
c) study the material for several days prior
to the exam by going back to each chapter. Focus especially on the
information you've highlighted: convert it into organized handwritten notes and
then study from these notes. Again, focus on understanding it, not just
memorizing it, and don't forget to study your class notes carefully.
2. No Way, Dude! Many
students have great study habits. Obviously, I don't know you personally, but I
hope you are in this group. Unfortunately, in talking with students
quarter after quarter, it is clear that most students greatly underestimate the
amount of work required to do well in this class. Even worse, when told that
doing well in Intro Psych requires a lot of studying, too many students have a
belief which goes something like this: "No Way, Dude, I've heard Psych 101
is easy and hey, I know a lot about people, so it's all common sense
anyway." In case you hold this belief, all I can tell you
is.........carefully read on. And if this isn't your belief, read on anyway.
You'll find it interesting.
3.
Great Expectations: Almost nobody expects to do poorly in this course. Even students who
skip readings and miss many lectures expect to get a decent grade.
Unfortunately, over the years the average grade on Exam 1 typically has been
somewhere between a 1.5 and 2.0 (D+ to C) with 20% to 25% of the class failing.
By the end of the course most students do better: the average grade in my
course typically is about a 2.5 to 2.7 (Not including the extra-credit for
being a research subject, which typically adds about
.2 to the class average). But clearly, many students could do a lot better,
especially if they got off to a better start.
4.
Why are Initial Test Scores so Low? You may find this hard to believe, but the reason
many students do much more poorly than they expect to is
not because the exam questions are hard. In fact, based on the analysis of my
tests from the Educational Assessment Center on campus, almost all of the test
questions individually come out to be either easy (85% or more of the class
gets it correct) or moderate in difficulty (50% to 84% of the class gets the
particular question correct). Usually, only a few items get classified as hard.
The low test scores occur because many students miss a lot of moderately
difficult (and some easy) questions. And this occurs because those students
typically report spending less than half as much time studying outside
of class as they should. On top of that, many students who do poorly simply
don't do all the readings and wait until the last minute to "cram" in
those readings they actually get to. Yet, they still expect to get B's and A's,
but in reality they tend to get C's, D's, and F's. Overall, as you'll see
below, students with good study habits clearly do better in the course.
In Autumn Quarter 1994
I added a few questions to the back of Exam 1, asking my class about their
study habits. Then I correlated their Exam 1 grades with their study habits.
The results were interesting. I gave that class the following feedback and I'm
giving you this information now because I think you will find it useful.
Purpose:
I asked 5 questions to
get a better idea of how well prepared the class was for Exam 1 and to see if
there was a relationship between preparation and exam grades.
Participants:
397 out of 436 students
(91% of the class) voluntarily completed the study habit questions.
TABLE 1
ACTUAL
GRADES ACTUAL GRADES
|
Exam Score |
Approximate |
Grade Students Expected |
ACTUAL GRADES Entire
Class |
181
Students Who and All |
216
Students Who Missed Lectures and/or |
|
|
33 - 29 |
A to A-
(4.0--3.4) |
22% |
13% |
23% |
6% |
|
|
28 - 26 |
B+ to B-
(3.3--2.7) |
45% |
19% |
31% |
12% |
|
|
25 - 23 |
C+ to C-
(2.3--1.7) |
27% |
23% |
21% |
24% |
|
|
20 - 22 |
D+ to
D-(1.3--0.7) |
5% |
18% |
16% |
19% |
|
|
below 20 |
F (0.0) |
1% |
27% |
9% |
39% |
|
Grade Feedback:
The mean (mathematical
average) was a 22.54 (grade point equivalent = 1.5). The median was 23.00
(1.7). (Note: the "median" represents the middle score in the
class.). The grade distribution is shown in Table 1. Also shown are the grade
distributions for those students who reported that they a) did all the readings
and came to all lectures, and b) missed something (i.e., missed one or more
lectures, didn't finish all the readings, or both). As you can see, those
students who did everything performed substantially better overall than those
students who didn't.
Expected Grade
Two thirds of the class
expected to perform in the B to A range, whereas in reality only one third of
the class did. Virtually nobody expected to get a D (5%) or F(1%) , whereas 45% actually did!!. These data suggest
some substantial overoptimism by a part of the
class (in particular, from students who didn't do all the readings or attend
all lectures).
Lectures Missed
55% of the class reported
coming to all lectures, 24% missed one lecture, 13% missed two, 5% missed
three, and 3% missed between half to most of the lectures.
Only 61% of the class
reported completing all four chapters. 18% said they read three chapters, 13%
read two, 4% read one, and 4% said they didn't do any readings.
Time Spent on Classwork Outside of Lecture (Note: expected time for a 5
credit class = 10 hours/week, or 22 hours based on the 11 lectures prior to the
exam that quarter. 21% of students said they spent 16 or more hours doing classwork beyond our daily lecture period. 32% said between
11 to 16 hours, 27% said 7 to 10 hours, 17% said 3 to 6 hours, and 3% said zero
to 2 hours. In short, 47% of the class reported doing less than half of
the "expected" outside classwork time.
Final Comments:
These data are correlational. They suggest possibilities, but do not
"prove" a cause-effect relation between studying and grades. With
that caution in mind, here as some final comments. As Table 1 indicates, doing
all the readings and attending all lectures does not guarantee a good grade
(that's true in any course; similarly, when learning sports, music or other
skills, many hours of practice don't guarantee that a high level of skill will
be achieved ). However, there is a clear relationship: Almost 55% of students
who "did everything" got A's and B's. Only 18% of students who didn't
do everything got A's and Bs, but almost 60% of this group received D's and F's . During this quarter, if you're in the "Did it
All" group and still do poorly, I urge you to see me or a TA right away to
help pinpoint what might have caused your low grade. If you're in the
"Didn't do it all" group," then the first step toward getting a
better grade is to keep current with the readings and lectures, complete all of
them, and give yourself several days to review and study the material prior to
each exam.