Night and Good Luck Bruce

¶ … Night and Good Luck

Bruce was furious when his midterm is returned with a "C-/D+" grade. He tells his history professor that he's read each of the assigned chapters, went through the sample tests, and if someone can do that and just get an average grade, there must be something wrong with the test or the instructor...or both! Assume that the test was a fair and accurately reflection of the material presented in the class. Based on the material presented in your test and other class materials regarding critical thinking, memory formation, and appropriate study techniques, what is wrong with Bruce's reasoning? What are some possible explanations for Bruce's average to below average grade? How should Bruce study for the next exam? Be to include in your essays detailed information regarding Bruce's use, or non-use, or critical thinking skills, memory formation, study

Bruce's thinking is just as faulty as his memory -- or perhaps, his problem is not his memory at all, but rather his approach to encoding information in his memory. What types of 'memory' is he selecting, to 'file away' into his memory bank? To do better on the next test, Bruce must engage in some critical self-examination of his study habits. He must determine if his study method is faulty, if what he tries to remember is his problem, or if he is not sufficiently engaging with the material on a higher cognitive level.

First and foremost, merely because Bruce must understand that merely because he reviewed the material for the test it is not guaranteed that he will remember the material, even if he used practice tests. Memory is, after all a "leaky bucket" and Bruce may not have remembered what the instructor considered important for the test. The 'leaky bucket' theory of memory retention suggests no one can remember everything (otherwise we would still remember the first phone number we ever dialed) and we must forget some things. The question is what do we 'choose' to forget? Bruce may exercise poor discretion when forgetting and remembering. In other words, Bruce may, as a student may be the sort of individual to focus needlessly on small details, and ignore the larger picture. The test may have been conceptual, rather than factual but Bruce may not have been able to apply concepts, only regurgitate information, which was evidently not what the instructor thought was sufficient to achieve an 'A.'

Another problem may have been Bruce's preparation in relation to his colleagues, namely his fellow students. Many other students may have had a fairly fluent 'working memory' of history concepts and facts. Bruce's application of what he had learned in class might fall short, in comparison to these other students. If students were very familiar with the material even before taking the course and Bruce was not, his application of the concepts may have been lacking in comparison to theirs, or he may have had to work harder than other students to build up a database of concepts and facts to be equally fluent as other students on the test. In terms of the structure of the test itself, Bruce may also have had less familiarity in the mechanical procedures of how to study for a conceptual test, rather than a factual test, given the structure of his education up until now. Even if he practiced on the sample tests, students may have had more extensive preparation on similar tests for much of their educational lives beforehand.

Bruce cannot change his past exposure to the material, of course, but he can change his study habits. A critical problem may be Bruce's overreliance upon semantic memory, or rote memory of facts and names. Other types of memory may be more indelible and evocative, such episodic memory, or memory of a specific incident, and associating different concepts and facts with episodes from Bruce's own life rather than simply memorizing may be helpful on the next exam. Bruce's study habits may not deploy effortful encoding, in other words, he may feel that a brief scan of the material is enough, as if simply rolling the book across his eyeballs registers the material in his brain, or that memorizing a 'cheat sheet' of names and dates is enough.

Bruce may have poor study habits in general. Even hormonally, Bruce may have studied on little sleep, with more on his mind than the test. He may have been cramming, studying for several tests at the same time, thus reducing the amount of time the information would be resident in his long-term memory. Another important physical component of effective studying is creating a distraction-free environment. The 'three-box model' of information storage that suggests information is taken in, stored or forgotten in the short-term memory, and if not forgotten then retrieved from the long-term memory 'box' is problematic in many ways. Individuals possess the ability of individuals to take multiple kinds of stimuli from a variety of different channels, all at once. While this is good, or can be good, when, for example, you are driving a car and need to take in many aspects of the road into your consciousness, on the other hand, having too many distractions in the study environment can mean that the material in the textbook is not being fully absorbed, or not reflected upon in a meaningful manner. Today, there are more distractions than ever, from iPods to the Internet, to divert a student's attention while studying and make reading the textbook and taking practice tests 'count' less than might be suspected.