New research on study habits to help college students

Chance Morrow, Reporter

 

The time of cramming into the late hours of the night for final exams has come to grace students at SUNY Buffalo State once again. The lines at Starbucks and Spot Coffee will start to resemble the lines of patient shoppers waiting for Black Friday to begin.

Students at the library will start selling their vacant seats to the all-nighter crew of students that waited too long to finish that final paper. As long as there is an open table next to a trustworthy outlet, there will be a student studying for a final exam.

But connected to that outlet is a studier’s greatest enemy, an enemy that will pull one away from the final exam material for that introduction to physics course, and into countless hours of cat videos.

Every student has their own personalized technique for getting the most out of studying. However, distractions are becoming a common element of the studying process throughout the student population. Stephen Bennett, a graduate of Michigan State, performed a recent study on 3,000 students to find what study habits are popular, in addition to common study distractions.

“One major element missing from my education was studying techniques,” Bennett said when describing his inspiration for the research. “No teacher ever sat me down and suggested ways to study, to memorize, or to think. We’re presented with a lot of information and told to get on with it.”

For this reason, it was obvious to Bennett that he wanted to help other students achieve their potential and “not miss out simply because they weren’t taking notes in the right way.”

The results of the study found that students when a student had a study technique they felt more confident and comfortable about studying and got more done is a shorter amount of time.

This simple revolution inspired Bennett and his colleagues to create Stop Procrastinating, an application that blocks the Internet connection or selected websites to help alleviate and eliminate posing distractions. Bennett explained, “You can block the Internet connection completely for a set amount of time, or you can block selected websites. You also have the option of either rebooting before the time is up, or if you are in need of real discipline you can choose an option that will allow you to get back online only once your time is up.”

Diamond Jones, a Buffalo State junior public communications major, admits to falling victim to the alluring distractions of internet-based social media.

“I usually allot myself about an hour to study for a normal exam, but there are times when that hour is knocked down to thirty minutes of studying the actual material, and two hours scrolling through Facebook,” Jones said.