Forming and Running Study Groups
To use your study group time most effectively, consider the following guidelines:
1. Meet at the same time and place every week. Following a routine reinforces the habit of study.
2. To make the study sessions more effective and efficient, choose a group leader. The leader is responsible for keeping the group "on task" by monitoring digressions and other time-wasting activities, insuring that everyone gets a chance to partic ipate in the group's work, and occasionally delegating work to various group members.
3. If an individual in your group consistently fails to prepare or to take an active part in the work, he/she can be asked to drop out of the study group.
4. Combine your group's lecture notes into a set of master notes, discuss the key ideas in each lecture, and highlight these ideas in the master notes for individual review.
5. Take turns asking each other questions about the assignments, making sure everyone has a chance to ask and answer questions. One way to focus this activity is to construct sets of test questions (based on the types of questions in old exa ms) and use these items to quiz one another.