Making Better Students

Some time ago, I asked how we could help our students make up for the widely-lamented lack of studying skills — and just plain living-as-a-student skills — they bring to college with them. Since then, I’ve been thinking more and more about this problem, as I’ve grappled with some of the deficiencies and ineptnesses that seem to be breeding like rabbits among my students. Over the break, I decided that I needed to commit myself to bringing some of the studying and learning skills that those of us who have achieved higher degrees have picked up along the way, making explicit things like how to write a research paper but also how to organize one’s time or how to learn leadership.

One result of this is a new site I put together during the intersession, entitled Being Better Students. The basic idea is to collect (and, occasionally, author) good, solid, and doable tips for students — things that they can read and immediately go and do to help them wrap their heads around what should be very high demands on their time and energies. Now that I’ve started to accumulate a decent amount of material, I’d like to invite Savage Minds readers (and writers) to have a look and let me know what you think — and especially let me know what works for you or your students. I’d be happy to accept guest posts, or to repost information sent privately, or whatever, so long as it’s practical and useful.

Hopefully, the site will help encourage professors to take on some of their own students’ short-comings — I’ve gotten a little tired of colleagues telling me that I had to work around these problems instead of helping my students face them down. Hopefully, too, there will be information from time to time that’s new to some of us “students-for-life” — it’s never too late in your academic career to become a better student!

One thought on “Making Better Students

Comments are closed.