Study group or stand alone

By Ahmad
Sunday, 24 August 2008

TRONOH: A university life is never a miles away from lectures, assignments, quizes, tests, reports, presentations, field trip and final exams! There, I spit it all out. Beyond that, there are times that we feel as if the time we had is not enough to cater our daily routines. That is why the term 'study group' come into picture.

1. THE RECIPE

Either we like it or not, this method seems to fit into our priorities of to-do list. In order to came up with an active study group( who would'nt), the first checklist that we must have is of course the least piece of paper that would cross our mind; course outline. With a little bit of smoke from our 'sky rocketing' textbook, and then 'puff' there we have it,our very own subject overview!. Subject overview is essential in getting the overall picture of the subject(not a chapter, read: subject).

What is more interesting is from that subject overview, you can manage to interpret that not all chapters in the textbook are 'standalone'. They are actually inter-related with its past and present chapter. Therefore, we can group that chapters under one category in the subject overview. That is why any book has its table of content, so that readers could understand the flow of the book.

After we are done with the subject overview, bring in the objective of each category. It would not hurt if you bring along past final exams question as it usually ask about the objective after all.

2. WHO'S THE BOSS

In any organization, clubs or even secret society has its boss. So does in study group! The boss is the one who controls and stick the team together, he is the one who is going to identify the subject overview and its relation with other chapters together with their respective team members. He or she is not going to give instruction such as "Peter, you are going to summarize chapter 1 and Nathan are going to be in charge on chapter 2", That is not study group, it is just simply read and read it out loud competition! Never (I repeat never) start a group discussion with that summary thing.

A leader has to understand the overview of the subject and assign one or two person (depending on how long the category is covered in the course outline) to be the person in charge of one category. A category could be two or three inter-related chapters and that assigned person may not necessarily be the one experts on that subject ( to all group leaders please remember this point).

3. DICIPLINE

Short and precise (because I know you heard it plenty of time before), do what your boss told you to do e.g. reading before hand and not to loiter around off the discussion topic too long (sometimes is OK, leader please control your group!)

4. RESPONSIBILITY

Everyone is responsible to themselves, do not expect an 'A' just because you joined a study group and get feed from your friends. every group members are responsible to read about the subject before hand.

No reading means no study group! And one more thing to be reminded is that, even if you have done the subject overview, you still needs to read before class (subject overview are intended to get the inter-relation between chapters) so that your brain is not shocked by the new topic it learn.

5. TIME FRAME

Do not laugh if I share with you that an active group discussion could exceed one or two hours easily with still some point or topic that has not been discussed. You would not feel it as too long or a burden if you have that self belonging to that group.

The most important topic to discuss about is, firstly, start with the objective that we do not understand (45 mins), secondly, what we have understand (30 mins), thirdly past exams question (45 mins or less)

6. THE DON'TS

a. NOT, forget and/or busy (busy people always have time) to read before hand
b. KEEP the subject overview in a nice quaint little space such as closet, pile of papers for safe keeping (too beautiful to use)
c. WANDERING your mind away from topic discussed (see no. 3)
d. NO question asked!

This article is based on my experience, my friends experience, my seniors all together.