20111011

Online reading assignment question: helpful/unhelpful Midterm 1 physics study tips

Physics 205A Midterm 1 Survey, fall semester 2011
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

Students have a weekly online reading assignment (hosted by SurveyMonkey.com), where they answer questions based on reading their textbook, material covered in previous lectures, opinion questions, and/or asking (anonymous) questions or making (anonymous) comments. Full credit is given for completing the online reading assignment before next week's lecture, regardless if whether their answers are correct/incorrect. Selected results/questions/comments are addressed by the instructor at the start of the following lecture.

Describe something notable that either helped or did not help with studying for this midterm. Selected comments may be discussed in class. (Graded for completion.)

The following are all of the student responses to this question, verbatim and unedited.
"Practicing problems over and over."

"i like going through the book and doing the practice problems that they show how to do step by step because then you can compare your steps with the books and you know if you got the right answer or not."

"STUDY GROUP!!!!!! The best thing ever is to work with others to help and get helped!!!!"

"Music helps."

"identifying the problem with equations"

"I got behind in the homework because it was not collected. It doesn't help me when you ask me how I did on the problems, because I get behind and often times don't do them. It would help me if you actually collected assignments, or at least a review assignment for the midterm."

"Flashcards help for sure."

"study group!"

"Doing problems definitely helps me. Sometimes if I read the book I will start to confuse myself again so I stick to doing the problems until I figure it out. Also It would be helpful to have the answers to the flashcard questions at the end of the slide. I can't tell how well I'm doing if I don't know what the answer is and I don't have time in my extremely busy schedule to email the instructor for the answers."

"Working through past problems is helpful for me and having a discussion group."

"There are no answers posted to the flashcard questions, and that would be the most effective way of studying."

"reviewing the old notes and homework assignments to reference to the book with. reading the chapters front to end."

"Do the practice problems in the end of the chapter in which the answers are in the back of the book so you can verify your answer or help you resolve why you didn't get the correct answer."

"Well obviously if you kept up with your studies from the beginning of the semester when it comes time for studying for the midterm it shouldn't be that difficult. What I do is briefly go over the chapters and write down important notes, either things I struggle with or not. Just basically an overview of the chapters that will be on the test. As well as doing practice problems which is VERY important, the reason behind this is if you look over problems you already have done you won't get the same 'shock' factor as you may during the midterm. Everything seems easy and feasible until maybe there is no answer in front of you. -The More You Know- haha"

"Doing out practice problem on my own."

"Homework, homework, homework"

"i think by re doing the homework and looking the equation"

"Going over practice problems helps."

"Doing old homework problems or practice problems from the book help a lot."

"if you have a general understanding of the concepts covered in class, it helps to spend to spend some time doing some flash car q's or homework's again to make sure you can do all the specific work well, and not mess up on little things on the exam"

"the flashcard problems helped out."

"my roommates are 4th year engineers at cal poly"

"What is helping me study for this midterm is going over all of my old worked out homework problems that were explained really well in class."

"it helps to go over quiz questions you got wrong"

"Units, Units, Units. I find it helpful to keep in mind the units I'm trying to get to in my answer. Sometimes this clears the path in my head to how to get said answer, especially in those long word problems."

"eating candy."

"Applying the subject matter to real life (like the car crashes with lab 6)"

"working with a group through problems is always helpfull. it would be helpful to have a review, with listed review problems that we should know like the back of our hand. and it would also be helpful to have keys to the flashcard questions!"

"Review did not help."

"What helped was what to review for the test that you posted on the calendar, and then in class talking and discussing different subjects on the whiteboard as a group and linking their common ideas together."

"The flashcard questions really help, but I was the answers were more readily available."

"office hours!"

"listening to music that i know the words to, i just wanna sing the words rather than study......"

"roommates who do not have tests or know physics are not helpfull"

"doing extra problems helped"

"Not studying the whole weekend before does not help I'm sure."

"Flashcards are awesome. I wish we had a list of problems to work out for study because reworking old problems does not help too much for me."

"Study group was helpful, but that is mostly thanks to ______'s 'no life', as she puts it"

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