1. Improving Learning by Enhancing Study Skills of Community College Students Kathryn H. Sorensen, Biology American River College, Sacramento CA

2. American River College 34,000+ students 2 year community college Transfer, remedial, 2-year degree, certificate programs

3. Science Skills Center Developed in response to student needs Based on Supplemental Instruction (SI) model from UM- Kansas City ½ unit transferable course Meet with students for 20 minutes a week for 6-8 weeks Taught by faculty, Instructional Assistants, and student tutors

4. Curriculum/ Schedule Week One –Time management/ Learning Styles/ Previewing of text Number of hours of work, school, and study time. Calculate numbers of hours of study time. What is the student doing in class and out of class? You can’t read a science text like a novel.

5. Curriculum/ Schedule Week Two –Annotation of text/ Paraphrasing Yes, it’s ok to write in your book. Practice, practice, practice Week Three –Note-taking/ Graphics RAD notes format Diagrams are not optional reading

6. Curriculum/ Schedule Week Four –Concept Mapping This is hard and takes time, but only if you’re doing it right. Week Five –Test-taking strategies/ Analysis These are only helpful if you are using the information from the other modules. Week Six –Evaluation

7. Key to Curriculum Co-requisite with a science course (majors and non-majors) All homework given from that science course Metacognitive journal by students Accountable to someone outside of class

16. Student Responses Percentage of students who responded Very or Somewhat Helpful –Time Management- 85% –Text-reading- 86.4% –Paraphrasing- 87.3% –Note-taking- 84.6% –Concept Mapping- 81.3% –Graphics Reading- 83.6% –Test Preparation- 87.8%

17. Student Reponses Did the SSC help raise your grade? –70.5% said yes Of the students who responded yes… –48.2% raised by half a grade point –51.8% raised by a full grade point or more

18. Comments I think [the] SSC is fine. I have a BS degree, so came in with some sets well developed. Even still, I found new information. They introduced me to concepts that I would never have thought of. These concepts were more helpful than my usual way of studying I thought the SSC was helpful and I did and will encourage other people to take this course. I learned new ways to help me study and reminded me of things I learned in the past that were helpful. So far I have increased my overall class grade from a 68% to a 77%

19. Comments- Test-taking Having the test taking strategy more early on in the program. I really liked the test preparation and I would think it would be helpful to move it in the beginning, because it really helped me with the test taking skills. I just tested it recently, but it would have been awesome if I could have used it in the beginning of the biology class. Test-taking strategies should be done earlier in the process The test strategies really helped. I wish I had taken it earlier. Give test preparation at the beginning Everything was quite good but emphasizing test techniques would be great