Habits of Successful Study Groups

There comes a time in your education when you realize that your parents can not help you too much with homework. This will often start when the student is in advanced classes in 8th grade and beyond. Parents and student will often resort to hiring a tutor for one-to-one study sessions. But what should the student do in between tutoring sessions to get ahead? Form a study group!

There are keys to making your study group successful. Here are a few suggestions:    

 • The coffeehouse study group

1.      Make sure everyone in your group purchases something. You are taking up valuable space for that businesses customers. Coffeehouses don’t mind study groups as long as they are polite and paying.

2.      Since most places don’t have wipeboards, it may be a good idea for each person to purchase a small wipeboard so that problems can be shared.

   • Hosting a study group

1.      If there is more than one house that the group can meet at, rotate the meeting places so that not one single person is always carrying the burden.

2.      Have a large wipeboard at each house or designate one person to bring it to every meeting.

3.      Make it potluck! Have all members bring something, besides sugary snacks, to the meeting. Such as a veggie or fruit tray or a protein platter. You really need to have brain food for studying! Sugar crashes will slow down the group.

4.      Have the caffeine ready. One cup of coffee can boost the brain’s productivity more efficiently and for a longer time than sugar.

5.      Make it cozy but not too cozy. Make sure the thermostat is set at a comfortable room temperature. Think of Goldilocks, not too warm and not too cold.

Some advice for running the study group:

  Assign each section ahead of time to each person in the group to become an “expert” on that topic. This person can be the “teacher” when it is time to work on the problems for that section.

§  This includes making study cards for new vocabulary in each section or formulas that need to be memorized.

§  Make it a game! Play Biology Jeopardy or if the “teacher” is working on a particularly difficult math problem and is struggling, tag team the problem. That’s right hand off the marker! Another person’s point of view should always be welcome! 

§  Compile and make copies, digital or paper, of the notes you took for your section and share them with the group. OneNote is a great way to share information digitally and is set-up like a regular notebook. You can gather all your sources from the text or online in one place.

  Remember, studying as a group should be fun but productive. There will be times when the group is working through assignments that you may simply just need to go back to your instructor and ask to clarify the question or problem. It is not much fun to study alone all the time, so why should you?