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study and wide reading are needed to develop a deeper understanding and help you to apply your knowledge in new contexts, and this in turn will help you to achieve better grades and feel more rewarded. In other words, you need to use different types of behaviours at university than you used at school, in order to gain the same rewards. You have been taught, or conditioned, to study in particular ways, but at university, different types of study behaviour are needed to gain high grades. Practical tips for improving learning So what are the new behaviours you need to learn? Your time at university is probably much less structured than it was at school, so learning to manage it for yourself, and organise your studies is critical. If you are studying a full-time course, you can expect to put in around 35 or 40 hours per week, even if you are only in class for perhaps 10 or 15 hours. The remainder of the time outside scheduled classes is study time; you can organise it flexibly, to fit around other commitments, but you do need to make sure it happens! Reward yourself for your hard work with study breaks; consider going for a walk, and avoiding screen-based activities, to maximise your concentration levels when you come back to your study again. The material you have to study is often not set for you, and this comes as a surprise to many new university students, who are used to their teacher telling them what to read. At university, it is your responsibility to find your own reading. Start with the reading lists you have been given, and identify relevant chapters and papers from those. Follow up on this by looking for other work by the authors who have been cited in those articles, to see if you can find out more about what they have done. Adopt active reading strategies, asking questions of yourself, and trying to find out the answers – be curious! Think about reading to prepare for your lectures, so you know what to expect and what to look out for, rather than only reading up on the topic afterwards. You should study like this every week, not just as assessments are due; this will build your knowledge base so that you have more information at your finger-tips, and you will meet lots of different perspectives on the same topic, which will help you to develop your critical thinking skills. If at first you find studying like this difficult, you can ask for advice from your tutor or your university study skills centre, but if you keep up this approach consistently, your learning will get better, your grades will improve, and you will probably find the learning process itself far more rewarding. There can be an immense sense of satisfaction from learning something new and gaining understanding of something you previously found difficult! Remember, too, that learning is a process, and it takes time to get it right! If you are struggling, think back to what we learned in Chapter 2 about the growth mindset. Don’t give up, but instead keep working on your study skills, use feedback (both the formal feedback on your assessments and informal feedback from talking to your tutor), and remember that practice and hard work will help you to improve over time. Seek out help from your tutor or your university study skills centre if you need it, and read the ‘Spotlight’ section below to find out more about how cognitive psychologists Robert Nash and Naomi Winstone’s research can help you to make better use of your feedback. As you read, reflect on the extent to which you work actively with your feedback, or accept your feedback passively. We’ll then move on to examine some of the ways in which cognitive psychology can help us to learn better.

© Oxford University Press, 2020