How To Do Well in a College (Philosophy) Class

• Take responsibility for all of your duties as a student.

• Record all assignment due dates.

• Get to work on assignments early.

• Seek out help and guidance on assignments from the instructor.

• Don't miss class.

• Don't be late to class:  lots of important information that is vital for success is presented in the first five minutes of class, and in general, you want to make a good impression that you are serious and responsible.

• Don't skip assignments.

• Take good notes.

  • Here are some useful suggestions for how to take good notes:  Hints for Good Note Taking

  • 3 Ways to Take Better Notes

• Take notes by hand instead of typing on a laptop.  Research shows that condensing and summarizing to write it out by hand helps learn it better than typing it out verbatim:  Take Notes by Hand.

• Review your notes after class.

• Do all of the assigned readings--take notes, ask questions.

• Keep an accurate record of your grades and your overall standing in the course. 

• Stay attentive in class, participate in class discussions.  

• Plan ahead for requisite study time, paper writing, assignments, and test preparations.

• Be realistic about how many classes and how many activities (like hours at work) you can handle.  

• Make use of available resources:

  • CSUS Writing Center--Resources for Students

  • Philosophy Department Writing Guidelines

  • Philosophy Resources at CSUS Library.

• Resist the temptation to text, email, surf the web, or multi-task with other activities when you are working on readings and assignments for class.  The empirical evidence clearly shows that our performance goes down on multiple tasks when we try to do them concurrently.

• Don't text, Tweet, email, or surf while in class.

There are some other more organic suggestions that will help.  Consider these questions:  

• Are you getting enough sleep before class and before you do important assignments and tests?

• Are you eating well and at the right times for class?

• Are you getting regular exercise?  

• Are you paying close attention in class, and avoiding the temptation of distractions?  

• Are you working too many hours to be able to balance school and a healthy life? 

Here's some good advice about what works and what doesn't:  

Study Better:  Tough Studying Makes Easy Tests

    His summary:  

• Study a little of each subject every day; space it out. Don’t cram!

• Practice different types of problems in a jumbled order, so you’re not doing the same kind of problem all in one go!

• Test yourself, and take as many practice tests as are available. Practice questions help too!

• While studying, ask yourself: “Why is this true? How did it happen?” Then try to answer those questions.

• Also ask, “Did I know this information already? Does it make sense to me? Is this something new?”

• To do the above, you can make flashcards. Study some flashcards for each subject every single day, and randomize the order, etc. You can also make a few "question" flashcards—i.e. "Why was the previous fact significant?" or "How does this relate to what I know?"—and toss them into the stack, to periodically remind yourself to engage in deeper thoughts about the concepts.

And here's more research about what works in learning and what doesn't.  You'll be surprised at some of the counter intuitive results of the empirical research:

Improving Students' Learning with Effective Learning Techniques.  Dunlosky, Rawson, March, Nathan, and Willingham

On getting help from your professors:

Some students are dissatisfied with their quiz scores or assignment grades.  And I will often get an email that says something like this, “I studied the lectures and the reading, but I got a poor score on the quiz.  Can you help?”  

Here’s some of my guidance for this situation: 

First, until I have some specific information about which concepts, arguments, objections, or ideas in the material you’re having trouble with, I can only make vague suggestions.  But if you can give me details, tell me which concept you’re confused about, cite a particular question, quote a missed answer, etc. then I can give you some very specific, and hopefully helpful feedback on what you’re missing.  

Second, the poor score is some important feedback that while it may see to you like you’re studied, you’re approach is not giving you the mastery of the concepts that you need.  Most like, you need to read the assignment again (more slowly), take more careful notes, review the lecture, and look at your wrong answers, and try to figure out what went wrong.  Studying takes time and it takes a lot of work, probably more work than you’re used to for some of your classes.  You’ll need to be an active reader, taking notes, generating examples or ideas of your own, asking questions of me, or of the text, and so on.  

Third, you should come to see me in office hours, email me, or talk to me on Zoom.  Hours and links are posted on my website.  And to make the time efficient and helpful for you, and to help me know what you need help with, you should come prepared with specific questions, page numbers, concepts, and issues.  Have a list of things written down that you want to ask me about.  Then bring them to office hours or send them to me in an email and I can directly help.  

Fourth, learning is a process of going back and forth across material you don’t understand as well and finding your way into understanding it.  It will take creativity, open-mindedness, perseverance, and resolution on your part to get the material figured out.  Be receptive, try different approaches, come at it from different angles.