Studying for an Economics Course - Constructing a Master Set of Class Notes

Class lectures are an important source for a course. However, your class notes, homework assignments, quizzes, textbook and even examinations are all additional resources. Many of you will find my lectures easy to follow and "understand." When something is easy to follow, read, and understand, you may get the feeling that you have "learned" it. It is more likely that you have "acquired" just enough of it to be dangerous! I don't test acquisition as much as I do application. This means YOU have to be able to apply the concepts we are studying in a cogent, analytical form.

I strongly suggest that you study for this course like this:

First, read over the material before the lecture. Don't get too bogged down in the details, but do reason through the analysis on your own and familiarize yourself with the terms and concepts. This will make following the lecture much more productive at the margin.

Second, take good class notes. I would be happy to look at yours if you suspect that this may be a problem. It usually is.

Third, construct a "Master Set of Class Notes." Sit down at your desk soon after the lecture (preferably that evening -- you naturally retain more over the short term.) Get your textbook and look at the Table of Contents for the chapter using it as an outline of the chapter materials, and a pile of loose-leaf ruled paper (Yes, there is evidence that writing involves higher-level thinking or "deep-processing", while typing involves lower-level thining or "shallow processing." ) Begin with the outline and using the text and your class notes explain each of the concepts in the outline fully. Some of these concepts can be explained in a short paragraph, others may take a page or two.

Fourth, and crucial to your success, APPLY THE ECONOMICS. Your homework's are specifically designed to do this. Applications are, to a great extent, what you will be tested on in examinations.

About now, you may legitimately be asking yourself… "Why on earth go through all this trouble?" Try these on as rationale...

• This approach requires you to synthesize materials from three disparate sources: your class notes, the outline, and your textbook's content. This requires what cognitive psychologists call "deep-processing" which is required for effective studying. (See these Stephen Chew Videos!)
• This approach provides you with a much more complete set of notes than just class notes can provide. I've seen many sets of notes over the years and many, if not most, university students don't take good notes.
• This approach provides a comprehensive and cohesive set of notes from which to study for your examinations. If you have followed my suggestions you won't even need to open the textbook the day before the examination. You can just study your most excellent notes.
• This approach requires you to practice applying what you have learned and applications are tested. Also, rest assured that experience is one heck of a teacher!
• This approach works to improve students their A.R.A. skills (Acquisition, Retention, and Application.) If you do everything suggested here there is no question that you will learn economics.
• If you wait until the exam is approaching and then try to assimilate all this understanding in a day or two of what you call "hard work", you won't do very well. And you will feel cheated because you "studied so hard."
• Don't delude yourself: Intellectual work is hard work. Effective studying needs to be a systematic process, not a manic event.

After you finish reading and understanding, you are less than halfway through your work with that concept. You must test yourself on each of the major concepts and principles to see how well you could explain each. Chances are good that you won't be able to do very much explaining after one "reading and understanding" of the chapter but it would be a mistake to simply go back and re-read the chapter. Instead, take each one of the major concepts or principles and work with it individually until you can close the book and explain it. After you have worked your way through the chapter in this way, then test yourself again. Without looking back into the book, write a brief explanation of each of the important concepts and principles. These practices help you with retention.

Once retained you must now apply, apply, and apply again. We will provide ample opportunity for this through course assignments. Applications require practice - so be consistent in your study habits.

Graphs are inescapable. We will cover them in depth. The best way to understand graphs is that they are a pictorial representations of some relationship. It is imperative that you pay attention to the relationships you are describing with your graph. Each axis od the graph isolates one variable. There will be many graphs and you must practice drawing the graphs and explaining them to yourself. You need to keep doing this until you can draw and explain each graph without looking in the book. Again - it will help immensely to pay attention to the fundamental relationship you are describing with your graph.

Assigned homework and exercises provide additional explanations on some of the more difficult or confusing concepts and principles.

Webpage Last Updated on August 18, 2013

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© Bradley K. Hobbs, Ph.D. 2001. All written portions of this work are those of Bradley K. Hobbs and his alone.
Intellectual property rights are claimed over my intellectual product (Read "Capitalism" by Ayn Rand.)