Learning to Learn Workshops at SUNY Plattsburgh Learning Center

Learning Center Workshops

The Learning Center professional staff and Academic Personal Trainers would be happy to attend your class, club meeting, or floor program to lead a workshop on academic skills.  The workshop can be tailored to a specific concern or present more general study strategies.  All workshops are interactive, encourage participation, and focus on student concerns. 

To schedule a workshop, contact Karin Killough, Director, or Nancy Parri, Assistant Director..

Recent workshop topics include:

• Goal Setting and Time Management
• Strategies for Success
• Making the Grade and Preparing for Exams
• Research Writing and Citing ,

Goal Setting and Time Management

 

The Goal Setting and Time Management Workshop helps you set the right tone for the semester.

With the guidance of your workshop leader, you will work through a series of activities to help identify your own academic and personal goals. Then, your workshop leader will model how to create an individualized plan to reach your goals.

The workshop helps you to "see" your blocks of time. Throughout the session, you'll learn tips and techniques on how to better use that time to balance all of the different time commitments that are crammed into a college student?s schedule.

Since this session does focus on your schedule, please bring your course syllabi with you.

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Strategies for Success

 

The Strategies for Success Workshop provides an overview of the simple and basic tools for learning every student should know.

In order to better use your time preparing for lectures and studying for exams, it's helpful to know how you learn best. The Strategies for Success Workshop starts with a simple inventory to help identify your strengths as a learner.

Once you know how you learn best, we'll focus on applying what you learned to tried and true strategies for success. 

Your workshop leader will model two tried and true techniques for effective studying. The Cornell Notetaking System helps you take organized, detailed notes during lectures and class discussions. SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) is an easy method to getting the most out of those expensive textbooks. 

Plus, throughout the session, we will discuss tips and hints to success offered by our peer tutors and professional staff members.

And, just in case you forgot where the workshop started, Strategies for Success focuses on you and your learning style. The challenge is to adapt the techniques and tips we model to how you best learn.

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Making the Grade: Preparing for Exams

 

Exam preparation should be an ongoing process and not a last-minute cram session. Think about it. The more you interact with material the better you are able to retain and use the information you learned. Making the Grade: Preparing for Exams helps you make preparing for exams a regular part of your study schedule.

While regular studying and use of academic supports (the professor, your peers, in the class, and of course our tutors) is essential, it is also important to recognize that each type of test calls upon different strategies for success.

Short answers, essay prompts, and multiple choice options all ask us to process and produce information in different ways. Attending this workshop will give you the basic guidelines to successful test-taking strategies for the three most popular exam questions.

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Research Writing and Citing

 

Sometime during your academic career here at Plattsburgh State University you will be asked to write a research paper. In the Research Writing and Citing Workshop, your workshop leader will take you through the essentials to begin a good research paper.

This interactive workshop highlights the essential pre-writing steps to a well-researched paper. From when to start to what to do, each step is identified, explained, and modeled in this no nonsense approach to the research project.

In addition to taking you through the basic steps of writing a research paper, the workshop leader will also provide you with an essential guide to on-campus contacts who can help you at every stage of the research writing and citing process.

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For More Information on Study Skills

The following sites can offer you assistance (in the privacy of your room) regarding how to manage your time between socializing and studying and how to better prepare yourself for classes and exams. 

• http://www.sarc.sdes.ucf.edu/studyhandouts.html  - The Student Academic Resource Center of the University of Central Florida is a treasure chest of study skill material.  The site provides handouts on Concentration, Memory, Textbook Reading Strategies, Time Management, Test Prep, Goal Setting and Attitudes, Test-Taking, Notetaking, Self-Testing, Study Skills, and Vocabulary.
• http://www.howtostudy.org/resources.php  - Sponsored by the Chemeketa Community College, How to Study provides general as well as disicipline specific study strategies
• www.rio.maricopa.edu/distance_learning/tutorials/study - Rio Salado College's online learning community provides essential types to better studying based on Jane McGrath's Seven Steps to More Effective Studying .
• www.academictips.org - Academic Tips is a collection of "how to study" tips from students and teachers.  The site provides general and content specific study tips and allows you to share your own study tips or join a forum.