Global Utilities

La Trobe University
Language and Academic Skills (ESL)

How to be a smart learner

There are a number of ways you can become smarter at university. You need to become aware of how you like to learn so that learning at university is less stressful, more meaningful and more rewarding.

Where and how you learn

Taking control of your environment so that you ensure you are comfortable and can concentrate to your maximum is vital for efficient learning. What is right for one person may not suit another.

Do you learn best when you listen to people describing and explaining? Do you find that you often problem solve by talking aloud? If you answered yes to these questions then going to lectures will be very important to you. Listening to lecturers and other students will help you to understand difficult concepts and academic texts.

On the other hand, you could be the sort of student who loses concentration if you have to listen to a long lecture, especially if the ideas are difficult to understand. Do you prefer to be active, rather than sit and listen? If this is you, then your best learning could happen in practical workshops. If you can access lecture notes online or in the library you can organise the amount of time you spend sitting in the one spot. You will also find that you need to have many breaks when you read.

Many students have limited concentration for reading. Do you often read a page then realise you cannot remember what you have read? There are a number of strategies you can apply. Take frequent breaks for food, drink and fresh air. Introduce activity to your reading by taking notes and marking the text. Always read with a purpose. You can do this by making questions to direct your reading. You can ask yourself the questions or you can write them down.

Getting the environment right and controlling knowledge delivery could depend on knowing about your individual learning style. The following websites could give you insights on the best ways for you to learn.

Learning more

It is useful to know your learning style so that you can give yourself the best learning opportunities. I have observed, however, that students learn best if they can use more than one sense and more than one learning stimulation, no matter what their learning style. For example, you are more likely to remember a new word you have heard if you can make a drawing of the word. You are also more likely to process and remember something new if you connect the new data with what you already know. 

Connecting what you already know with new input is especially important for the studies you do at university.  The human brain has to work hard to process new knowledge; you can reduce this work load by accessing what is in your memory. Asking yourself how the ideas in a subject are related to each other is  a good way to revise your knowledge.

You can also develop your memory and your ability to learn by grouping information. When you group a number of related ideas/facts together your mind only needs to recall the one group, rather than working hard to remember all the separate facts.  Sometimes your university teachers will clearly demonstrate how all the parts of a subject relate to each other, sometimes it is up to you to make the connections.

  • The Memory Page is a site which seeks to improve your memory and has some fun activities
  • Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, by Richard Heuer. A good overview of how to improve thinking in the light of insights from cognitive psychology.
  • Metacognition is thinking about thinking, knowing "what we know" and "what we don't know." This article, Developing Metacognition by Blakey, E. & Spence, S. gives you strategies for learning how to think.

Learning smarter

Making what you learn meaningful will help you to develop into a smart learner. You can make university knowledge relevant by trying to apply what you are learning to other realistic situations. Another way to be a smart learner is to take a questioning approach and think about alternative views on the same topic. You can also try to see the connections in a range of views. Connecting ideas in a subject not only helps your memory it also helps you to understand and have your own perspective. Most importantly, thinking about new knowledge and how it relates to your life experiences will help you to learn what is valuable to you.