Education Improving your grades at university

With a few smart tips on how to study you can improve your grades and maximise the effectiveness of time spent studying. This article provides you with a key tip from someone who has taught at university. Get the insider guide on what lecturers are looking for. While different types of assignments require different specific study advice there are some generic study skills and advice that will prove useful regardless of whether you are tackling an essay, report, dissertation etc.

The first and most important study tip is to see the eyes through the world of the person who will be marking your work. Most lecturers are busy people who will not spend inordinate amounts of time trawling through your work. With the expansion of higher education lecturers are increasingly being asked to mark more and more assignments. One way of dealing with this is to streamline the marking process, i.e. make it more efficient. This pressure ties in with another aspect of the changing higher education landscape. There is now increasing quality control in place to ensure students are being treated fairly. This leads to a greater degree of transparency in terms of marking. Both of these pressures, efficiency requirements and quality control, have resulted in assignments being more closely related to specific marking criteria. Very rarely will you now find an assignment with a couple of comments and an overall grade. What usually happens is a breakdown of the overall mark into various components; say one for the introduction, another mark for level of criticality, another for use of sources etc. These marking criteria are what you will be marked against! Therefore: - Write your assignment with a copy of the marking criteria next to you - Once you have written your assignment check it against the marking criteria While this study advice is simple, it is effective and surprising how often remains ignored. The worst that can happen if you follow this advice is that you can confront your professor with the marking criteria to argue your case. However, if you stick diligently to this advice it is difficult not to pass, and indeed improve your grades noticeably.