Hi! Welcome to another episode of the smart student podcast.  I am your host Dr. Ehoneah Obed and in today’s episode, I’m going to talk to you about one particular question that I keep being asked almost all the time.

A number of students have asked me this question.  Which study method would be best for me? That is to say, they asked me to recommend a way of study for them that would make them excellent students.

 In this particular episode, I’m going to walk you through how to settle on a study method or a way of study that is going to turn you into a smart student. 

With the study methods,  there are a lot of ways that individuals can use to study to achieve excellence in their academics. 

However, I have put these study methods into two main categories and we are going to discuss those two main categories. These two categories that I have put them in I referred to as the active methods and the positive methods. 

That is to say that when it comes to studying, there are active methods that you apply to study.  Active methods mean that you apply yourself. 

You need to be equally engaged when you are studying okay you have to focus on what you are studying and you have to plug a certain period of time to invest into studying that will become an active method of studying. 

The passive method will refer to as, when you have time or you are doing something else but you can equally be learning at the same time. 

Passive methods unlike active methods do not necessarily need too much of your focus.  I am therefore going to break down these two categories of study methods that I have mentioned so that you appreciate them and know how to use them. 

When it comes to studying methods the problem that a lot of you have and I think I should make clear here before we even talk about the various study methods is that, one in school mostly you have less time to study. So that is your problem or that is the first problem that almost every student has, less time to study. 

Then secondly, it is about your ability to even remember the things that you study. So there are a lot of things that you need to study and you have to be able to recall all these plenty things that you are studying. 

Hence anytime that you are studying you want to make sure that you have made good use of the time that you have.

 So the little time that you have you should be able to learn as much as possible and the lot that you learn within that short period of time that you have you should be able to remember as much as possible. 

How then do you achieve these two things?  How do you spend the little time that you have learning a lot of things and being able to remember all these things especially for the sake of your exams? so that when you write your exams you’ll be able to come out with flying colours. 

Now let’s take active learning.  Most of you or I would say that most students are actually aware of the active study methods. 

When we talk about the active study methods that most students use is just sitting down and reading your books.

So  a lot of you are used to it.  When you go to class you are taught something and you come back home. The only thing you have to do is to sit on your book and read it.

As  you know this is time involving, which means that it is an active method of studying because you need to plug a certain time for yourself and sit over it.   

During that period of time, the only thing that you’re going to be doing is to be studying.  That makes reading as part of your study or reading as a study method of an active method. 

You can’t be reading whilst you are doing something else. You have to put all your focus into the reading in order to absorb much of the things that you are learning.

So a lot of you are used to this but is that the only way to learn? The problem that I have even though I’m yet to talk about the passive learning. 

The problem I have with most students is that you only focus solely on the active methods of study. 

So all you know about is that if I’m going to study then I have to sit down and read a book that is when I can see that I am studying. 

So those of you who are using handout you feel that if you have not sat down to read the handout then you have not studied and that is a very wrong notion and today I want you to correct it. 

For you to be a smart student you need to be able to couple the passive methods of learning with the active method of learning. 

You don’t just have to do one of them and that is what a lot of students are not aware of.  So  in this particular episode of the smart student podcast, I’m bringing you to the awareness stage that’s how you need to engage or you need to learn using both the active and passive method.

For the active methods, I’ve talked about reading. Another active method that not so many people exploit but I know a few students or a few smart students if I should say who will use it, is watching of videos. 

I ever heard someone say that watching of videos is not my thing like for me to be able to study and understand I don’t really use videos.  

And I’m like you don’t use videos is it because you don’t want to use videos or is it because you don’t have access to the videos because those things are two different things.

Every student can make good use of videos. In fact so far as you are able to sit in class and listen to a teacher explain things to you and you are able to understand, then it means you can equally use the videos. 

However, the videos are also some form of active learning. Meaning when you are watching a video about what you are studying you need to focus.

You need to plug a certain period of time for yourself just to focus on that content that you are learning.  

So  if you have not started watching videos yet you need to start watching videos. I mean if you have learned something in class and you want to revise, it is not only about going to read about it you can equally go and download videos on the topic. 

For instance, you can go to YouTube, go to most of the educational channels on YouTube. Khan Academy is a very classic example where you can get a lot of content about the things that you study. 

So you get lectures or video lectures online about the things that you’ve been taught and you get lecturer teaching you just as you would have experience in class.  

Imagine your lecturer is by your side in your room sitting in the comfort of your own room instead of you going to class to sit down.

So it is an opportunity or it is an avenue for you to also learn.  

So we’ve talked about two main active methods. That is learning by reading and learning by watching videos. These two I recommend for you. 

Now let’s look at the passive methods of study so that we can put them together and make headway into becoming a successful student. With the passive methods, I can talk about two different things so let’s take them one by one.

The very first one that I will talk about is listening to audio.  Let me explain why this is a passive method. I can equally be doing anything that I want and at the same time listening to an audio.

So for instance,  let’s assume that I have the audio version of a lecture that I attended.  Instead of plugging a period of time for me to sit down to revise the things that I was taught in class, I can be on the walkway back to my hostel or Hall of Residence whilst listening to what I was taught in class. 

This is a passive form of studies because now the time that I have is time that I’m walking from the lecture hall to my hall of residence and is not a time that I have allocated for studies.

So let me break it down. When we talk about passive learning it is a time that you have not put on your personal timetable for studies. 

You have not plugged any period like that on your study timetable that during this.

 I’m going to be doing that so in fact, you are using time for something else to augment your time for studies.  

Don’t forget that we established that one challenge that more students face is that, you have less time to learn a lot of things. 

Adding on, a passive method of study is very essential. You need to learn and master how to do this.  One way you can do this is to download audio forms of various lectures. 

So if you are taught something today you can equally go to YouTube and download instead of downloading the audio depending on the type of lecture. 

So they are some lectures that you need illustrations in the videos to understand what they are saying. 

However, there are some lectures that you just need audio content so you can download just the audio or you can even download the video and convert the video into audio or extract the audio from the video. So that at any point in time you have the audio to listen to. You could be in your room cooking while still listening to the audio. 

The other thing you do or you can do which is usually not acceptable in every institution is for you to record your lecturer.  

Sometimes without permission, this is illegal so if you need permission then you have to talk to your lecturer in charge. 

However, if you don’t need permission just set a recorder on when the lecture begins because when you do that right after the lectures or any period after the lecture you can sit or you can listen to the recording that you have several times. I used this method of study and it really really helped me a lot.  

Because at any point in time you can playback the audio that you recorded and it helps you remember the things that you were thought. 

Instead of going to find enough time.  I see that a lot of students complain that all the time you are in class and after class I have to come and do homework there is no time for me to even study what I was taught in class so this is the trick. 

You don’t need to actively sit down to study or revise the things you were taught in class before you know that you have learned it you can equally use the passive method by listening to a recorded version of that lecture. 

So you need to listen to the recorded version at your own free time. At a time that you have plug for something else it could be cooking as I keep saying it could be walking by the roadside, it could be even lying on your bed taking a nap or resting and listening to it at the same time.  

So that is the first passive method that I talk about the second passive method that I’m going to talk about is talking to your colleagues or asking your colleagues questions. 

Some of you, you have a lot of assignments to get done unfortunately you don’t have all the time and hence you end up not doing everything because you want to do all of those assignments all by yourself no-no-no. 

Once again the challenge you have as a student is that you have less time to study a lot of things and you have to be smart about it. 

This is why we have the smart student podcast to train you to become a smart student. Take it from me that you need to be smart about the ways you study and this is one way that you can do that.

Instead of spending all the time all by yourself to study or find answers to the assignment that you have been asked to or all the things that you have been asked to study. 

Find out some let your colleagues find out the others then you discuss. For instance, they’ve given us let say about 10 find out instead of myself going to sit down and do the research for all the ten  I can decide with two other colleagues or just one other person. 

That is I’m going to do five of the find out and my other colleague will also do five of the find out that is the other five of the find out and afterward, we’ll meet and discuss.

So I just do my five.  It could even be on a phone call afterwards I call my colleague then we discuss the other five that he or she did and also tell him or her about the five that I did.

The advantage here is that, once you have saved yourself the time of going to search for the other five. 

Then two because you have taken time to explain what you have found to another person it sticks far better than what would have happened if you have just learned it without explaining it to another person. 

 The third advantage is that someone else to also taught you the other five and it’s usually easier to remember what another person taught you. So this will help you remember. 

So in this episode, we talked about the two main categories of study methods that I have put as the active and passive methods of study. 

And with both of them, we realize that you have to combine both if you want to be a smart student and you want to succeed as one.

You have to combine active learning which involves your reading activity or watching videos about the things that you have been taught. 

Then secondly you have to add on a passive method that could be you listening to recorded versions of your lectures or audios of something that you’ve been taught before or you talking to your colleagues or discussing things with your colleagues at your spare time. 

So these two things or these two methods are supposed to be put together. You have to do them together in order to succeed as a student. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and you have learned something new.  I expect you to put this into practice and indeed you will become a smart student eventually.  

I am looking forward to you succeeding in school and this is my way of helping you. 

Thank you for listening to this episode and I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye

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