Forming good study groups

I found study groups to be helpful, just in case... If you get sick, can't make it to class, etc. Although you plan to be there for every class, it's nice to know that you can ask someone else for notes if you're not, and vice versa. I find my study group partners by finding the smartest people in the class (if possible). Also, I find that those folks who are most talkative/social at the start of the class, are the hardest to study with. I tend to get easily distracted, so it helpful to me to study with those who are really serious and won't run to get coffee and snacks every 15 minutes. It's good to find out why they are taking the class. I had one girl in a study group who didn't really need the grade, she was just taking it for credit. Effort for someone who wants to pass and someone who wants an A are very different.

I usually study on my own too, but I could not have made it thru Physio without my study group. Also, that is a class where you have to understand the process, not just memorization. I was lucky, everyone in my study group was serious and we got down to business. We'd meet twice a week for about 2 hours at a time....long enough to stay focused and short enough not to burn out.

We always meet in a library room with a dry erase board for some visual learning. We also took about 30 min or so to go over the lecture notes to fill in the gaps. We'd go over the processes (ex. action potential) and then draw it on the board. We also had a different person lead the study group, that way everyone really got a chance to practice saying the process out loud, which I found is one of the best ways to understand. If you have to explain it to someone and can do it, you understand.

Good luck!! :)

I was a part of a study group for micro, and it really saved me! I started out failing an exam....got into a study group and immediately started getting better grades. The only thing I did was started asking around to see if anyone else in the class was interested in studying as a group. Everyone I asked was interested, but in the end only about four of us took it seriously and showed up for the group all the time. We met for two hours before class started twice a week, on days we had exams (it was a summer session so we had class four days a week, with exams on two of those days).

Thanks. The problem I ran into most often was no matter how hard I would try to get things focused on the class material, some wanted to talk about husband, boyfriends, etc. After a while, I felt like I was forming a social event.

I believe the way the nursing study group I belonged to started was as all of us having lunch together on our big day of all-day lecture. It grew to meeting at one of our homes every Tuesday night. What we did was decide at the end of each meeting what we would discuss at next weeks meeting. We often looked at our syllabus as a guide and each of us would volunteer to kind of be a presenter of certain parts of information on the syllabus. It wasn't formal. It was really more of a discussion. We would review class notes and any spectacular insights any of us might have had on each of the subjects. We sat around and snacked while we talked. We brought together any information we had about the tests (we took tests when we were ready and there were three different forms of each test, so getting information about what was on these tests was a regular endeavor) and anything that was pertinent to other things that might be affecting our grades. None of us were in the same clinical groups which was probably good. We reviewed procedures and asked questions of things we weren't sure about. We brought supplemental books to these meetings and shared the information in them with the others. Fluid and electrolytes was always a popular subject of discussion because it was difficult to understand. What one person didn't know, another most likely did. I don't think we couldn't have met more than once a week though. We knew it was time for any meeting to break up when they started to turn gossipy. I was closer with one of the students in the group than the others and we probably called each other nightly and talked for a few minutes, but it was more of a friendship thing.

When I was in my BSN program I can't think of any of us that were in study groups although there were 40 of us. Except for 3 of us who were working as full time staff nurses, the rest were working as full time supervisors and managers and most had families to attend to as well. In my ADN program, we were all younger and single.

Probably a good idea to spend the first time or two getting to know everyone. I guess I am too serious when it comes to school. I know I need to relax and enjoy life a little.:chuckle Thanks.