An Investigation of the SOAR Study Method

Jairam & Kiewra (2009)

Introduction

• Many college students report difficulties preparing for tests and studying.

• College students use weak strategies: – poor note taking– organizing ideas linearly– learning in a piecemeal fashion– employing redundant strategies.

Take Poor Notes

(Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 604)

Organize Information Linearly

(Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 605)

Learn in a Piecemeal Manner• Learning one idea at a time instead of

integrating common ideas.

Redundant Strategies

• Rereading and recopying notes expose students to information repeatedly.

• About 50% of students review notes passively reciting notes over and over and word for word.

Poor Strategy Instruction

• Few teachers believe in strategy instruction and help their students learn and improve study skills.

• There is no research support for popular practices like selective note taking, outlining, and rehearsal which are widely advocated in study skills textbooks.

• If ever taught, study skills are taught in a piecemeal fashion (as a list of study tips) or are presented as part of a study plan (SQ3R) that is not effective and difficulty to learn.

SOAR

• Selection of notes • Organization of notes • Association of information• Regulation of learning through self-test

SOAR

• Selection: Select complete notes from text; teachers’ notes are more complete but students’ contain familiar retrieval cues.

• Organization: Avoid using organizers for your notes that induce piecemeal learning such lists or outlines; use organizers that reveal relationships among noted ideas such as matrices.

• Association: Make association between internal and external links

• Regulation: Self-test by generating questions.

Selection (SOAR)

• Selection: Select complete notes from text; teachers’ notes are more complete but students’ contain familiar retrieval cues.

(Jairam & Kiewra, 2009, p. 604)

Organization (SOAR)• Organization: Avoid using organizers for your

notes that induce piecemeal learning such lists or outlines; use organizers that reveal relationships among noted ideas such as matrices.

Association (SOAR)

• Association: Make association between internal and external links

Regulation (SOAR)

• Regulation: Monitor comprehension through self-testing by generating questions: – How far is Earth from the sun? – What planet is the largest? – What planet has the fastest orbital speed? – What is the relationship between planet size and

surface?

Study Goal

• To test the SOAR method for fact and relationship learning

Method

• 60 college students were assigned to a control group or one of four other SOAR component conditions.

• Participants read a passage about wildcats, studied materials given, and were tested on fact and relationship learning.

Results

Results Cont’d

• SOAR is especially more effective in learning relationships than just reading the text but not in learning facts.

• The integrated SOAR method was more effective than most of its parts for learning relationships but not for learning facts.

Conclusion

• The SOAR method’s effect is stronger for relationship learning than fact learning.