Study Strategies

A Participatory Workshop Series moderated by Professors Rita Balaban and Patrick Conway

Our Carolina students are exceptional, both intelligent and studious, but we have both had the experience many times of having a student in our introductory class say:

“I’ve studied so hard for this class, but my grades don’t reflect it!”

When this happens, the explanation is often that the student studied hard, but didn’t study “smart”. Learning strategies that worked well in high school may need an upgrade for college courses.

To encourage each student to think about their learning strategy, we have set up five short talks for the fall semester. These are not required for our courses, and participants do not receive extra credit. We hope, though, that participation will help you in your planning for upcoming graded work in Economics.

We will lead these talks jointly. Each will occur at 7pm on Wednesday in Gardner 105 and will last for one hour. (We will record them for later streaming should that time not work for you.) We count on active participation by those in attendance. There will be substantial question-and-answer time.

The schedule of talks, and the subject of each talk, is given below:

September 4
Managing Your Class Responsibilities
PPT Notes |  Video

September 18
Organizing your Study Time for the Course
PPT Notes  |  Video

October 2
Recognizing the Important Themes of the Course – How are the various subjects connected?
PPT Notes  |  Video

October 23 
“I’m stumped!” Strategies for overcoming the blanks in your understanding.
PPT Notes  |  Video

November 13
Anticipating the Final Exam. What do my mistakes on the Midterms tell me to do differently for the Final?

If you have questions, feel free to contact either Professor Balaban or Professor Conway.