Distance Learning Support Kit: Welcome

	Studying at university

It's understandable that students new to tertiary study want to know what it is exactly that makes a "successful university student." In a nutshell, successful university students are:

highly motivated
self-directed
deep learners, and
willing to ask for help when needed (see Self-directed learning).

In other words, these students are active learners who:

adopt a critical approach to material
relate what they are learning to what they already know
test their understanding
put their knowledge into practice, and
reflect on how they can improve

Before you get overly concerned about fulfilling all of these criteria, you might like to try thinking about learning in a slightly different way. In many ways learning at university is not fundamentally different from the process of gaining knowledge and developing new skills which you have gone through innumerable times in your life already.

At first you may be sceptical about the validity of this claim. For a moment then, let's just look at a skill you probably already have. As an example we'll use the process involved in learning to drive a car.

Example

'L' Plate

From an early age you would have observed other people driving and asked them questions about how to drive. By the time you were old enough to start driving yourself, you would have already distinguished between competent drivers and those who were not. In other words you would have adopted a critical attitude to what constitutes good driving.

When the time was right you would have collected information about the rules and regulations of driving which you would have studied and put into practice by actually getting into a car and driving. Once you had gained sufficient knowledge and expertise you would have sat for a series of examinations which tested your knowledge of road rules as well as your skills at the wheel.

If you failed your tests the first time you would have needed to reflect on what went wrong and then you would have gone back to again observing, studying and practising until your knowledge and skills were up to scratch.

When you're studying at university it's important to remember that in many ways you already have experience in being an active learner. Although some of your study skills may need some work, the fundamentals are already there.

This said, coming to the university for the first time can be a daunting experience, so it's also important that you gain an understanding of how it works and what academic standards will be expected of you.