There are many ways to study, and the different ways one can study work better for different types of people. Even if you feel like one way of studying has worked well for you so far, there may be other strategies that help you excel even more, or that you find less stressful or anxiety-provoking. Or both! And different subjects cam be easier to learn by different methods, so it's an important to experiment and to try out a variety of study methods, to see what works best for you for each kind of class you find yourself taking. One valuable and often overlooked strategy for helping you study is to do it with a friend, or otherwise in a group setting. Many people find that studying with friends can help them maintain focus while removing some of the drudgery that tends to crop up in solitary study sessions, and that working with others makes it easier for them to grasp complex concepts. In this blog post, we'll discuss some of the benefits of studying with friends, and then some methods you can use to make your group study session more effective and enjoyable, to make sure that you and your friends can get the most from your study session.
Group studying can be enormously helpful in a number of ways because, as with much in life, studying is generally better done with friends -- you can avoid the dreariness of pouring over textbooks for a class alone, and enjoy quality time with people you appreciate. It can help strengthen group dynamics, and allows you to grow closer to people and see sides of them that you otherwise might never have known about. But it also helps in a number of other ways, as group studying isn't just more enjoyable and an opportunity for socializing: it also provides a number of new avenues for studying that can make it much easier to learn the material, can make every avenue of study easier, and can benefit every type of learner in different ways. For example, if you or your friend have trouble putting aside the time to study, grouping up can help tremendously. When others are relying on you to show up and participate in learning the material, it's a lot harder to slack off or skip out. Your friends or study partners can also help keep you focused on the task at hand, and ensure that you don't spend the entire study session looking at your phone, and you can do the same for them. So, why not get together with a friend or two and get studying?
But now that you’ve gotten your friends together, how should you study? What's the best way to take advantage of your time together? Before the study session itself, talk with your friends about what type of studying works best for each of you, and different strategies you could try out to ensure that you will all get the optimal results you can from the following study session. There are plenty of ways to learn the material that becomes easier when you’re with a group, and when you all know the methods that work best for helping you learn new things, it should become clear which strategy you should use. As an example, you can practice your memorization of the subject matter by utilizing flash cards with questions and answers written on them. You can compare your notes from class, and ask each other questions to clarify any particular points you didn’t understand from the lessons. Explain the important concepts to each other, to help confirm that you all understand what you’ve been studying. You can even make little games out of it, playing charades or Pictionary using various concepts or topics involved with your subject, or doing a game show style quiz in which you and your friends compete.
However, sometimes you need more than just a couple of friends, some pens, and paper. So it's useful to know that aside from simple tools like flash cards, there are many more high tech ways to enhance a group study session. By utilizing a website like makeanexam.com, you and your friends can optimize your studying and excel in class. You could try having each member of the study group create an exam based on their individual notes, then doing each other’s exams -- this can work as an excellent way to increase your knowledge retention and understanding of the subjects you’re studying. Because of the site’s easy exam creation and sharing, this also allows you to do effective group studying over long distances -- using a group chat on Discord or Facebook (or a similar service) and makeanexam.com, you can help a far away friend study for finals, or be helped by your friends across town without either of you having to get off the couch and make the trip to see each other. Alternatively, you could do each other's exams separately before the study period, and use the results of each person's exams as a handy guide for what sections of the material you all most need to work on. This allows you to prioritize the important parts that you most need to learn, saving valuable study time and helping make sure that everybody leaves the study session with a grasp on as much of the material as possible.
But what if you don't have friends or classmates who are available to study with? Well, by using makeanexam.com’s forums, you can meet new study buddies, help each other succeed in class, and maybe make a couple of friends along the way!
Whether you’re studying with a friend or a stranger, and whether they’re near or far, tools like makeanexam.com are invaluable for getting the most out of your study session. And if you're struggling to grasp the subject matter, or just having trouble with the boredom of studying by yourself, getting together with others to tackle the material can be incredibly helpful. Even if you find studying alone to be perfectly fine, you might want to give studying with a group a try -- you might find it even more helpful, and regardless of whether it's more to your taste or not, you can get satisfaction from helping a friend or another student to be able to do their best in class!