How does using technology help you study better?

1. It allows you to conveniently share notes with classmates
2. It has extensions and apps that reduce online distractions
3. It allows you to plan face-to-face study sessions online

As a student of an entrepreneurship school at the Philippines, grades and academics can definitely get overwhelming from time to time. There are many tools and approaches that can significantly improve your learning capacity and study habits.

A resource that will help you learn better is definitely technology. Although there have been many controversies surrounding the advent of the digital age, this list includes tips that will help you use technology effectively whenever it’s time to buckle down and hit the books:

It allows you to conveniently share notes with classmates

Thanks to websites like Google Drive, Google Docs, and Facebook, it has become easier for classmates taking management courses to share notes with each other online. Students have decided to help each other catch up with missed classes and pass exams through digital coordination.

To make your note sharing more helpful, you and your classmates should:

• Compare notes online, so everyone knows they understand the information the same way.
• Make personal contact with your classmates.
  • You shouldn’t just stick to exchanging written lessons.
  • Chat with them about stuff outside of school and form meaningful relationships.
  • Knowing each other on a personal level makes discussion of lessons more dynamic. People are usually willing to give a deeper analysis of their class learnings with classmates who they are comfortable with.

It has extensions and apps that reduce online distractions

Studying alone means you can learn on your own pace. Unfortunately, learning facts on our own can be very boring and this feeling leads us to find entertaining distractions, aka. the Internet.

Technological companies have realized that so many students struggle with focusing on their tasks. As a response, they have come out with downloadable apps and extensions that help with increasing productivity. They usually make you more efficient by:

• Removing online distractions by blocking online websites that ruin your groove.
• Pushing you to focus on a task for a set of minutes.

If you can’t resist checking the status of your friends on social media or playing games while you study for your management courses, these website options are for you:

• LeechBlock (Mozilla Firefox extension)
  • Allows you to use only use 6 sites a day.
  • You get to choose the time period this extension will block a certain website from your use (ex. No Buzzfeed form 6- 9 pm).

• FocusBooster (Mac and Windows app)
  • Instead of blocking you from distractions, it will make you more productive by following the Pomodoro Technique.
  • According to Pomodoro, you will only get a 5-minute break after focusing on a task for 25 minutes.
  • This app comes with a timer that also tracks your activity.
    At the end of the day, you receive timesheets which track all your computer activities and tells you how time you spent on each.

It allows you to plan face-to-face study sessions online

Before exams and major quizzes, college students will usually have at least one study session where they meet face to face. Here, everyone tests each other’s knowledge. They ask each other test questions, and groupmates will clarify their misunderstanding of the notes shared beforehand. Everyone here switches from teaching and learning.

A lot of people feel that meeting each other physically is very helpful. They usually feel more confident about passing a major test or quiz, and many students do come out with high scores as well.

For a lot of researchers, study groups have evidence that point to it being helpful for test learning. In one study, 78% of 463 undergraduates of 5 different fields and 38 educational institutions reported joining at least one study group per semester.

Each group used 3 strategies that are proven to help students to help learn better:

• Asking each other questions.
• Discussing course materials.
• Quizzing each other.

At the end of the study, 60% of all the participants admitted to learning more by studying with other students compared to doing it alone.

Besides these pieces of evidence, people perform better when they study with others because:

• Verbalizing information (ex. saying your answers to the questions of your groupmates) leads to faster memorization.
• Since every group’s agenda is to study as quickly as possible, you are motivated not to procrastinate.
• You don’t end up just rereading notes as a form of review. This is a very unhelpful strategy which students studying alone are prone to doing.
• Learning becomes more enjoyable with other people.
• Groupmates over different perspectives of the same course material which leads to deeper understanding.

Even if group study sessions have benefits, a lot of people find it inconvenient. At entrepreneurship school in the Philippines, your classmate in one class may not be with you in another subject. Because of everyone’s clashing subject schedules, it can be difficult to plan meetings with your study mates in real life. Thus, you can instead resort to social media chat groups for planning. Everyone can share their class schedules first, and then settle with a meeting time which every member can attend to for group study.

Key Takeaway

When you are studying entrepreneurship, grades state whether you stay or leave. Thus, you need to use resources that will help you study better and get good grades. Technology is a good resource because you can easily share notes with classmates, reduce distractions, and even form study groups online.