Information and Study Skills

Information and Study Skills

Good information skills are essential for successful professionals.

Early in your career you must successfully study and digest a huge volume of information, simply to become effective. As you become increasingly successful, you will need to digest huge numbers of documents, data and reports just to do your job, as well as assimilating all the information you need to keep up-to-date in your field.

The articles on reading help you to increase your reading speed and become highly selective in what you read. The item on review techniques helps you to keep information fresh in your mind. The article on note-taking gives you a powerful tool for recording useful information.

Enjoy the articles!

• Introduction to Information and Study Skills
• Effective Note-Taking with Mind Maps
• SQ3R - Increasing your retention of written information
• Speed Reading - Substantially increase your reading speed
• Reading Strategies - Reading efficiently by reading intelligently
• Review Techniques - Keeping information fresh in your mind
• Learning Styles - Learn in a way that suits you
• The Conscious Competence Ladder - Making learning a happier experience

Introduction

The techniques in this section help you to manage information better. By using them you will be able to improve:

• Your reading skills, so that you can find the information you need quickly and easily
• The way you make notes, so that they become clear and easy to understand, and quick to review
• Your review techniques, so that you can keep information fresh in your mind.

These techniques will help you to assimilate information quickly. This may involve keeping yourself up-to-date on events within your field, absorbing information within reports or learning specialist information needed to complete a project.

These are also very useful tools for mastering course material where you are studying for exams.

Techniques discussed are:

• How to take notes effectively - Mind Maps
• Fully absorbing written information - SQ3R
• Speed Reading
• Reading faster by thinking what to read - Reading Strategies
• Keeping information fresh in your mind - Review Techniques
• Learn in a way that suits you - Learning Styles
• The Conscious Competence Ladder - Making learning a happier experience

Mind Maps are powerful tools for recording and organizing information. They do this in a format that is easy to review. Once you understand and start using Mind Maps, you will never again want to take notes using conventional techniques.

The next three techniques (SQ3R, Speed Reading and use of Reading Strategies) help you to assimilate and understand written information quickly and efficiently.

The section on Review Techniques will help you to keep information that you have already learned alive in your mind.

Finally, the article on Learning Styles will not only help you develop the ways in which you can learn, but you'll be able to tailor what you do so that others can learn from you more effectively.