Study Habits at OHS

A survey with 24 respondents, consisting of 22 full-time students and 2 part-time students, was conducted to support this article. This is not meant to be a rigorous statistical analysis of OHS study habits, but this may give you some insight into study habits you may be interested in exploring.

Organization

Of 15 respondents who chose to share about their file organization systems, most reported that they organized their work with a folder for each class, with some reporting that they had these class folders inside another folder for the year or semester. Some also stated that they created subfolders within their class folders based on various criteria, including week, type of assignment/resource, and file type. This general system seemed to work well for most respondents, so if you don’t have an effective organization system implemented yet for the school year, you may want to consider this general method. Something I would also recommend, if you haven’t done this already, is to have your browser ask where to save each file before downloading and to make your class folders easily accessible—that way, you can more easily organize files from Canvas as you download them.

Asking for Help

12 of the 24 respondents reported that they frequently or almost always asked for help on major assignments, while 12 reported that they sometimes or rarely asked for help on them. OHSers reported consulting teachers for help most often, with a large number also consulting friends/classmates and peer tutors/teaching assistants.

Planning Strategies

15 of the respondents to the survey reported that creating to-do lists was a very effective strategy for school-related planning. Most reported that memorizing their assignments was an ineffective strategy while various respondents found a physical calendar, the Canvas calendar, and/or setting reminders to be effective for them. One respondent reported using a to-do list to plan out everything for the day/week and sometimes a separate list for assignments/exams taking more than a single day.

Tools and Resources

Respondents reported using an extensive array of resources, most notably resources from class pages on Canvas, class materials including textbooks, and notes. Previously submitted assignments, resources from outside of class, and class recordings were also frequently used among respondents. Overall, there are many resources that are available to you, and much of what you can find on Canvas, through Stanford Libraries, or through other online sources can be of use to you.

Specifically for notes, 16 respondents reported taking notes by hand in notebooks or loose-leaf paper, 14 reported taking notes in digital notebooks and text files, and 7 reported annotating inside a PDF reader or on printed readings. Generally there are benefits to taking notes by hand, while taking digital notes is faster; you may want to choose one or the other (or both) based on what classes you are taking.

I hope this gives you some insights into what study habits you might find to be helpful during your time at OHS, and perhaps you can use this article for inspiration to look for strategies that work best for you.