Teach Yourself How to Learn: Strategies You Can Use to Ace Any Course at Any Level

Following up on her acclaimed Teach Students How to Learn that describes teaching strategies to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success, Saundra McGuire here presents these "secrets" direct to students.

Her message is that "Any student can use simple, straightforward strategies to start making A’s in their courses and enjoy a lifetime of deep, effective learning."

Beginning with explaining how expectations about learning, and the study efforts required, differ between college and secondary school, the author introduces her readers, through the concept of metacognition, to the importance and powerful consequences of understanding themselves as learners. This framework and the recommended strategies that support it are useful for anyone moving on to a more advanced stage of education, so this book also has an intended audience of students preparing to go to high school, graduate school, or professional school.

In a conversational tone, and liberally illustrated by anecdotes of past students, the author combines introducing readers to concepts like Bloom’s Taxonomy (to illuminate the difference between studying and learning), fixed and growth mindsets, as well as to what brain science has to tell us about rest, nutrition and exercise, together with such highly specific learning strategies as how to read a textbook, manage their time and take tests.

With engaging exercises and thought-provoking reflections, this book is an ideal motivational and practical text for study skills and first year experience courses.

Saundra Yancy McGuire has been teaching chemistry and working in the area of learning and teaching support for over forty-five years. In 2007, she was recognized for excellence in mentoring with a Presidential Award presented in a White House Oval Office Ceremony. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the Council of Learning Assistance and Developmental Education Associations. In 2013 she retired as assistant vice chancellor and professor of chemistry at Louisiana State University, and in 2017 she was inducted into the LSU College of Science Hall of Distinction. She is now Director Emerita of the LSU Center for Academic Success, which was named the National College Learning Center Association outstanding learning center in 2004. Saundra has presented her widely acclaimed faculty development workshops at over 300 institutions in eight countries. Saundra received her B.S. degree, magna cum laude, from Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA, her Master’s degree from Cornell University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where she received the Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Professional Promise.

Stephanie McGuire holds a BS in biology from MIT, an MS and a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Oxford, and an MM in opera performance from the Longy Conservatory. Formerly a sougt-after private academic tutor in the New York City area, she is now pursuing an operatic career in Germany.