Category: EPPP Study Tips

Managing Email (part 1)

Posted on in Brain and memory, EPPP Preparation Materials, EPPP Study Tips by TSM Admin

In a previous post I quoted Nicholas Carr about the cognitive demands created by hyperlinks. Carr also makes some helpful observations about why we should avoid checking our email during the middle of any task:

“Studies of office workers who use computers reveal that they constantly stop what they’re doing to read and respond to incoming e-mails. It’s not unusual for them to glance at their in-box thirty or forty times an hour (though when asked how frequently they look, they’ll often give a much lower figure). Since each glance represents a small interruption of thought, a momentary redeployment of mental resources, the cognitive cost can be high. Psychological research long ago proved what most of us know from experience: frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious. The more complex the train of thought we’re involved in, the greater the impairment the distractions cause. …Many studies have shown that switching between just two tasks can add substantially to our cognitive load, impeding our thinking and increasing the likelihood that we’ll overlook or misinterpret important information.” Continue reading →

Managing Email (part 2)

Posted on in EPPP Preparation Materials, EPPP Study Tips, Psychology News by TSM Admin

Another key step to efficient online learning is knowing how to manage your messaging devises.

When you’re studying online, close any email readers so you are not tempted to check for new messages when you’re supposed to be studying. This includes exiting any websites like Gmail or similar sites that can access your email. You should also turn off any panels or pop-ups that allow for instance messages and you should turn off any RSS readers. If you have a smartphone or i-phone, turn that off too, or move it to another room of the house away from where you are studying. Continue reading →

Managing Hyperlinks (part 3)

Posted on in EPPP Study Tips by TSM Admin

In a previous article I shared the results of studies which found that cognitive processing of a text decreases as the amount of hyperlinks increase.

It will be helpful to take a few minutes reflecting on why this is. Why should the mere presence of links decrease our concentration of a web page? Nicholas Carr has answered this question in his book The Shallows, by giving attention to what happens in the brain when a reader is confronted with a hyperlink:

The need to evaluate links and make related navigational choices…requires constant mental coordination and decision making, distracting the brain from the work of interpreting text or other information. Whenever we, as readers, come upon a link, we have to pause, for at least a split second, to allow our prefrontal cortex to evaluate whether or not we should click on it. The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgments, may be imperceptible to us—our brains are quick—but it’s been shown to impeded comprehension and retention, particularly when it’s repeated frequently. As the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex kick in, our brains become not only exercised but overtaxed.

Don’t mistake where I’m coming from in sharing this. Hyperlinks are one of the most valuable aspects of the internet, and their capacity for helping us make connections is important. Yet we must also remember that the purpose of a hyperlink isn’t simply to reference other works like the footnotes in a book: a hyperlink actually propels us towards the new source. As Carr points out elsewhere in his book, the value that hyperlinks may serve as navigational tools cannot be separated from the distractions they cause.

Precisely because of this, we encourage students on the TSM to be proactive in minimizing the distractions caused by hyperlinks.

Again, this can easily be done by copying a webpage into a Word document and then removing the font that distinguishes the links. Or it can be done more simply by copying and pasting the entire document into notepad and from notepad into a Word document. It can also be done through printing (the subject of our next post). At a minimum, however, simply avoid clicking on links your first time through. Take a second read-through to click on links and read more. This is not unlike looking up and reading references in a printed book. Normally, we would read through an entire book before we look up all the references.

Further Reading

EPPP Strategies & Tips with Dr. Taylor – Successfully Preparing for Your EPPP

Posted on in EPPP Preparation Materials, EPPP Study Tips, TSM | Video by TSM Admin

Hello to all our blog readers…We’d like to share with you today a video TSM has created to give you a short overview on some things you will want to be thinking about as you head into your EPPP preparation process…We hope you will find this video with our very own Dr. Graham Taylor, to be both informative and enjoyable. Please watch and enjoy! And Happy New Years for all us here at the Taylor Study Method!

The TSM Difference Video

Posted on in EPPP Preparation Materials, EPPP Study Tips, TSM | Video by TSM Admin

Welcome to the all new Taylor Study Method. Re-imagined, and redesigned, TSM 4.0 is far beyond anything we ever dreamed possible for EPPP preparation. Enjoy over 700 EPPP keyterms straight from the latest versions of the actual exam. The entire body of EPPP content in an audio, and video platform. And now all of which is available to you on any mobile device either smart phone or tablet.

Making The Most of Online Learning

Posted on in EPPP Preparation Materials, EPPP Study Tips, Psychology News by TSM Admin

In our previous post, I suggested that online learning is the way of the future. One of the reasons we know this is because all the major universities are scrambling to provide online classrooms.

Already sixteen universities, including Stanford, Duke, and Princeton have teamed up with the company Coursera to offer their courses online to anyone in the world.

Similarly, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently formed the non-profit edX, which will offer university courses from MIT, Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley, as well as other institutions that may wish to be involved.

Professors are also excited about the almost unlimited potential of online education. An article for The Week Magazine recently reported that “Professors say it’s thrilling to reach so many students at once, from teenagers in India to baby boomers in Indiana. Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng, a Stanford computer science professor, recently taught an online class to more than 100,000 students. To reach that many people, Ng said, ‘I would have had to teach my normal Stanford class for 250 years.’”

Suffice to say, the benefits of online education are profound, as these new learning tools promise to reduce previous restrictions in geography, time and money.

However, as I suggested in my previous post, ‘Online Learning: the way of the future’, we need special skills if we are to make the most of our online learning experience. This is especially true when your EPPP Study Material is presented in an online format.

Students often neglect to give sufficient consideration to the skills needed to use the internet efficiently. And quite frankly, it’s also an area where most online universities are failing their students.

The Taylor Study Method doesn’t want to make this same mistake. We aim to not only deliver quality EPPP preparation materials to you, but to give you the study tips necessary for processing that information as efficiently as possible.