an investigation of the soar study method
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An Investigation of the SOAR Study Method . Jairam & Kiewra ( 2009). Introduction . Many college students report difficulties preparing for tests and studying. College students use weak strategies: poor note taking organizing ideas linearly learning in a piecemeal fashion - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
An Investigation of the SOAR Study Method
Jairam & Kiewra (2009)
Introduction
• Many college students report difficulties preparing for tests and studying.
• College students use weak strategies: – poor note taking– organizing ideas linearly– learning in a piecemeal fashion– employing redundant strategies.
Take Poor Notes
(Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 604)
Organize Information Linearly
(Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 605)
Learn in a Piecemeal Manner• Learning one idea at a time instead of
integrating common ideas.
Redundant Strategies
• Rereading and recopying notes expose students to information repeatedly.
• About 50% of students review notes passively reciting notes over and over and word for word.
Poor Strategy Instruction
• Few teachers believe in strategy instruction and help their students learn and improve study skills.
• There is no research support for popular practices like selective note taking, outlining, and rehearsal which are widely advocated in study skills textbooks.
• If ever taught, study skills are taught in a piecemeal fashion (as a list of study tips) or are presented as part of a study plan (SQ3R) that is not effective and difficulty to learn.
SOAR
• Selection of notes • Organization of notes • Association of information• Regulation of learning through self-test
SOAR
• Selection: Select complete notes from text; teachers’ notes are more complete but students’ contain familiar retrieval cues.
• Organization: Avoid using organizers for your notes that induce piecemeal learning such lists or outlines; use organizers that reveal relationships among noted ideas such as matrices.
• Association: Make association between internal and external links
• Regulation: Self-test by generating questions.
Selection (SOAR)
• Selection: Select complete notes from text; teachers’ notes are more complete but students’ contain familiar retrieval cues.
(Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 604)
Organization (SOAR)• Organization: Avoid using organizers for your
notes that induce piecemeal learning such lists or outlines; use organizers that reveal relationships among noted ideas such as matrices.
Association (SOAR)
• Association: Make association between internal and external links
Regulation (SOAR)
• Regulation: Monitor comprehension through self-testing by generating questions: – How far is Earth from the sun? – What planet is the largest? – What planet has the fastest orbital speed? – What is the relationship between planet size and
surface?
Study Goal
• To test the SOAR method for fact and relationship learning
Method
• 60 college students were assigned to a control group or one of four other SOAR component conditions.
• Participants read a passage about wildcats, studied materials given, and were tested on fact and relationship learning.
Results
Results Cont’d
• SOAR is especially more effective in learning relationships than just reading the text but not in learning facts.
• The integrated SOAR method was more effective than most of its parts for learning relationships but not for learning facts.
Conclusion
• The SOAR method’s effect is stronger for relationship learning than fact learning.