I hate it when I forget what I once knew. Why are there some lessons we need to continually relearn? Although this question may be relevant to my whole life, here I’m discussing the phenomenon related to teaching.

This past fall – when I was teaching all first-year students – I had that experience where about 2-3 weeks into the semester I realized that some of my students didn’t have fundamental skills related to reading and note-taking.

I realized this when some were getting horrible grades on open-note quizzes on the readings – quizzes that were open notes on questions that came right out of reading prompts they’d been provided. I met with a few students to try to diagnose the problem.

Sure, in a couple cases the cause was a lack of effort, but in some cases it definitely wasn’t. The students had read, but their notes were a mess. The unfocused and unorganized notes would have been useless not only on a quiz a day after reading but certainly on a synthetic essay a month down the road.

Why should I have been surprised? It’s always been the case that college students come to us with different academic knowledge and skills. Whether they have good foundations is often related to luck (or bad luck) in their high schools or specific teachers. I’m still jealous that my older brother had a fantastic teacher of grammar in 6^th grade and I – from the same family and attending the same school – did not.

I would bet that the percentage of students who didn’t get great instruction in high school has risen due to the effects of the pandemic.

After whacking myself on the forehead (picture the Homer Simpson “D’oh!”), I did some things to try to help those students who were struggling – and all my students. I created a list of reading and note-taking tips. The contents of the strategies handout won’t surprise faculty – it mentioned things novices might not know, such as:

• Check the reading questions before you start reading
• Understand the structure of the article/chapter
• Write marginal comments noting big ideas, your reactions, and questions
• Don’t over-highlight
• Pay special attention to topic sentences
• Re-read the introduction and conclusion to ensure you’ve got the big ideas
• Write the questions as well as the answers in your notes so they make sense weeks later.

While specifically targeted to my course, many of the tips are transferrable to other courses and disciplines.

Then in the next class period, I shared and showed the handout and walked through a demonstration of how I took notes on that day’s readings using the tips.

I remember when I was a T.A. in graduate school at UNC, my mentor Peter Filene shared a handout with his undergraduate students to help them read monographs strategically, focusing on big ideas and not every word and every detail. At the time, I thought, “Why didn’t anyone teach me this before now?”

When I was conducting research for my book Transforming History, I asked a more recent mentor, Peter Felten – who keeps up with all the best scholarship of teaching and learning, for his recommendations for what I shouldn’t miss. One of his top five for that year was a book by Saundra Yancy McGuire (and Stephanie McGuire), Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate into any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation.

In this book, based on evidence about learning and years of experience directing a center for academic success, McGuire persuasively argues that it’s well worth it for faculty to take some in-class time to explain how students will be more effective in learning content and modes of analysis in our discipline. Trying to figure it out on their own might have left students with unwise habits (such as simply re-reading rather than actively and critically reading or testing oneself).

Recently (belatedly) I discovered that Saundra Yancy McGuire has written a second book, which is geared to a student audience. It’s called Teach Yourself How to Learn: Strategies You Can Use to Ace Any Course at Any Level (Taylor & Francis, 2018). I admit I haven’t read it, but the compilation of strategies in the appendix seems sensible (although a few are a little more relevant to STEM classes).

Some of the recommended strategies are practical ones, such as always attend class and do the readings, take notes by hand, keep a weekly and semester calendar, join a study group, go to office hours.

Some are more metacognitive: aim for higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, prepare as if you have to teach someone the info and concepts, preview reading assignments, create practice exams. Others are more affective or related to mental health: adopt a growth mindset, monitor your self-talk, get enough rest, perform deep breathing.

It sounds to me like it would be a useful book for first-year students to read and for faculty and staff teaching a course like Elon University’s ELN 1010 to discuss with them.

Did my belated intervention help my students? Anecdotally, yes, a few definitely improved their performance and confidence due to knowing and implementing a couple of new academic strategies. I’ll try to remember to provide those tips sooner next time!