For excellent reasons, we spend a great deal of time fretting about the cost of textbooks. What gets less attention is the simple fact that many students have never learned how to approach a text, especially the massive survey tomes that seem composed by a committee.
You'll see students staring forlornly at the glossy pages, or highlighting every word with a variety of colored markers. (Yellow and pink may have been good enough once, but contemporary hues make one nostalgic for those giant Crayola boxes, with their laddered tiers of waxy choices. On the other hand, there may be something terribly wrong about the Causes of the French Revolution highlighted in avocado or mauve taupe.)
Students need a method. Tiffany F. Culver, a psychology professor at Sul Ross State University, provides an interesting approach. She offers a tool for students as they read for "Metacognitive Awareness." Okay, the title is unfortunate.
Her guide is published in Faculty Focus. A link is also provided to a pdf version that can be printed or distributed easily to students.
The list of steps could discourage some learners, or perhaps spur them to dig out their colored highlighters to prioritize. Nevertheless, Professor Culver's approach seems useful, given the format of today's textbooks, which tend to be organized alike—with chapter subheadings, bold-faced terms, summaries, bullet points, and such. The goal is to drill down to the essentials, a worthy skill in these times of sensory overload.
Textbooks will never soar to the lofty heights of Facebook when it comes to the laser-like intensity of grim-faced young people as they examine and update their profiles, for hours and hours. Talk about Metacognitive Awareness. But that's another topic.
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