We can all agree that reading in college is no fun. It's not like the reading you do on your free time or for entertainment. This makes reading painful. However, it's also the one of the most important segment of your courses. Most of courses are structured and designed based on the reading materials, understand them and then the application. Most professors assign reading materials more than they should, hoping students to read them all and understand them fully by next lecture. Some students actually do read them all for fun but most of us are just hopeless for the enormous amount of reading we have to do. This is why we have to make a strategic decisions about what we read and how to read it so we have enough time left to actually understanding them. To achieve this goal, I chose TART strategy and applied it to my NSD 225 & CFS 388 courses.
This strategy is particularly good for courses that are lecture dependent. The focus of this strategy is to utilize lecture as a preview for the reading and creating test questions as a review to prepare for the exam. To use this strategy, I read the important terms in bold print for the chapter responsible for the next lecture. Then I created a list of those terms with definitions that I expect my professor would focus on. With the important terms written down and getting familiar with them, I attended lecture and understood what professor was talking about more easily. After the lecture, I read the chapter for review and to clarify anything that I did not understand. I also created a test questions that I think my professor would ask for the exam and also answered them. This strategy helped me to prepare for exam and understand materials much easier. Because I knew the terms and concepts before the lecture, it was so much easier and clarifying to hear professor explaining them for the second time rather than trying to absorb them while listening for the first time. Because both NSD and CFS courses are lecture dependent and require us to read a lot from both textbooks and lecture notes, TART strategy worked very well. It also helped me to prepare for the exam and made reading much easier.
CFS 388 TART Notes
NSD 225 TART Notes
Seems like your iphone and apple computer is your primary source of note taking. I like how one simple application can be used in many different type of strategies we learned in CLS class. From looking at Andrew's blog and yours, and comparing both with mine, I see how the TART strategy is used by many of you and this tells me how effective TART is and how our learning styles are similar. Yet, no matter what strategy you use, as long as it fits you, that's the best for you! great job!
ReplyDeleteIt really seemed unlimited of how much you can accomplish with technology. I have used the tart strategy as well, and it really helped a lot. It forced me to review the materials beforehand, and I thought that if I accumulate enough possible exam questions, I would be better prepared for the upcoming exams. Good job Chan HEE!
ReplyDeleteAnother excellent use of your electronic devices. I also used the tart strategy which was perfect for courses that deal with definitions and terms mainly. Since you and I both take CFS388 we all know that tart strategy works greatly for the course. I am pretty sure you did just as well for your nutrition course. Good job and I was happy to see you enjoy your spring break
ReplyDeleteThis is a nice usage of TART through your note taking application in MAC. I also used this strategy in my NSD 225 course, and was able to comprehend the materials more thoroughly. I see that you have organized your notes into different phases and you have also made test questions for your NSD 225 course. Again, making those test questions while reading my stuff was very helpful for me. I like how organized your notes are, and hope they will help you out in most of your tests.
ReplyDeleteWord up to the fact that reading is no fun. I actually get sleepy when I read something that I do not really get interested in. Textbook is one of the books I really do not like to read. But, for my grades and classes, I did tried my best to understand the terms and informations that the textbook have. I am really surprised to see that you were really well prepared for your classes when you did the 'Term' part; all I did was just skim through the book. Really good to hear that the TART strategy worked for you very well. I guess all of us love the TART strategy.
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