An Investigation of the SOAR Study Method

1. An Investigation of the SOAR Study Method Jairam & Kiewra (2009)

2. Introduction • Many college students report difficulties preparing for tests and studying. • College students use weak strategies: • poor note taking • organizing ideas linearly • learning in a piecemeal fashion • employing redundant strategies.

3. Take Poor Notes (Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 604)

4. Organize Information Linearly (Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 605)

5. Learn in a Piecemeal Manner • Learning one idea at a time instead of integrating common ideas.

6. Redundant Strategies • Rereading and recopying notes expose students to information repeatedly. • About 50% of students review notes passively reciting notes over and over and word for word.

7. Poor Strategy Instruction • Few teachers believe in strategy instruction and help their students learn and improve study skills. • There is no research support for popular practices like selective note taking, outlining, and rehearsal which are widely advocated in study skills textbooks. • If ever taught, study skills are taught in a piecemeal fashion (as a list of study tips) or are presented as part of a study plan (SQ3R) that is not effective and difficulty to learn.

8. SOAR • Selection of notes • Organization of notes • Association of information • Regulation of learning through self-test

9. SOAR • Selection: Select complete notes from text; teachers’ notes are more complete but students’ contain familiar retrieval cues. • Organization: Avoid using organizers for your notes that induce piecemeal learning such lists or outlines; use organizers that reveal relationships among noted ideas such as matrices. • Association: Make association between internal and external links • Regulation: Self-test by generating questions.

10. Selection (SOAR) • Selection: Select complete notes from text; teachers’ notes are more complete but students’ contain familiar retrieval cues. (Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 604)

11. Organization (SOAR) • Organization: Avoid using organizers for your notes that induce piecemeal learning such lists or outlines; use organizers that reveal relationships among noted ideas such as matrices.

12. Association (SOAR) • Association: Make association between internal and external links

13. Regulation (SOAR) • Regulation: Monitor comprehension through self-testing by generating questions: • How far is Earth from the sun? • What planet is the largest? • What planet has the fastest orbital speed? • What is the relationship between planet size and surface?

14. Study Goal • To test the SOAR method for fact and relationship learning

15. Method • 60 college students were assigned to a control group or one of four other SOAR component conditions. • Participants read a passage about wildcats, studied materials given, and were tested on fact and relationship learning.

16. Results

17. Results Cont’d • SOAR is especially more effective in learning relationships than just reading the text but not in learning facts. • The integrated SOAR method was more effective than most of its parts for learning relationships but not for learning facts.

18. Conclusion • The SOAR method’s effect is stronger for relationship learning than fact learning.