4
Taking Charge of Your
Learning: Developing
Your Skills as an
Intentional Learner
Juice Images/SuperStock
Wavebreak Media/Thinkstock
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Explain the difference between general study skills and personal learning strategies.
Define metacognition and the role it plays in helping you become a successful learner.
Define the term decoding and be able to demonstrate its use when completing assignments.
Illustrate how FITing your Learning Patterns to a specific assignment increases the likelihood that
you will complete it successfully.
5. Demonstrate your use of personal learning strategies and tools.
joh82329_04_c04_087-122.indd 87
6/12/13 11:38 AM
CHAPTER 4
Section 4.1 The Need for Effective Study Habits
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains
nothing that it takes in.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1508)
4.1 The Need for Effective Study Habits
G
ood study habits are crucial for academic success. This is a message you have heard from
the time you entered school until now, as you enter or re-enter the adult learning world of
online courses. Many nontraditional students enter college long after their previous study
habits have faded from their minds. They may have never learned how to best study at all; their
old habits may have been ways to just barely cope with the work.
Now the need for effective study habits becomes urgent and immediate. Of course you can turn
to the Internet where you will find hundreds of sites filled with standard suggestions—have a set
place, study when rested, take breaks, do the hardest work first, study with a group or a buddy.
There are plenty of blogs relating how others have made studying work for them. But they are not
you! Studying is a universal requirement if you plan to succeed as a student; however, studying
strategies are very personal. There is no “one size fits all” in study...