COL 101 - Gamecock Gateway

The Ultimate Study Skills Handbook will help you succeed from the first week of your studies through to graduation. Covering all the core skills you will need to help you make the most of your university course, The Ultimate Study Skills Handbook is your key to success. This is the handbook of techniques, tips and exercises. Written by a team of experts and tested on students, the advice in this book will help you to improve your grades, save time and develop the skills that will make you stand out to prospective employers. Whichever subject you are studying, this practical and concise book will help you find your individual learning style and tell you exactly what you need to know to excel as a student.

Following up on her acclaimed Teach Students How to Learn, that describes teaching strategies to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success, Saundra McGuire here presents these "secrets" direct to students. Her message is that "Any student can use simple, straightforward strategies to start making A's in their courses and enjoy a lifetime of deep, effective learning." Beginning with explaining how expectations about learning, and the study efforts required, differ between college and secondary school, the author introduces her readers, through the concept of metacognition, to the importance and powerful consequences of understanding themselves as learners. This framework and the recommended strategies that support it are useful for anyone moving on to a more advanced stage of education, so this book also has an intended audience of students preparing to go to high school, graduate school, or professional school. In a conversational tone, and liberally illustrated by anecdotes of past students, the author combines introducing readers to concepts like Bloom's Taxonomy (to illuminate the difference between studying and learning), fixed and growth mindsets, as well as to what brain science has to tell us about rest, nutrition and exercise, together with such highly specific learning strategies as how to read a textbook, manage their time and take tests. With engaging exercises and thought-provoking reflections, this book is an ideal motivational and practical text for study skills and first year experience courses.