Parkland students share thoughts on study groups

Alex Davidson

Staff Writer

Many students at Parkland said that they have never been a part of a study group. The most often cited reason was that they simply don’t have friends in their classes and haven’t had the chance, but a few people have said that they would choose not to join one even if they had the chance to.

“I wouldn’t [join a study group],” said Cameron Heiser, a student at Parkland. “I study better by myself.”

Study groups are a method some people use to learn material by studying with other students from their classes.

According to Travis Sola, a professor of psychology at Parkland, the people involved in the group usually determine whether or not it is useful.

“If they don’t know the material,” Sola said, “it won’t help them very much. I think the best way for [it to work] is for them to prompt each other.”

Whether or not it works also depends on if the people in the group are able to work as a collective. One of the things that students interviewed said would be useful is to use the study group to help think of things that they wouldn’t think of studying on their own.

“I haven’t found a study group to join yet,” said Kyle Knox, another Parkland student. “But If I had the opportunity, I definitely would join one…because a lot of the time, when I’m studying by myself, there are things I won’t think of, and then I’ll go in for a test or an exam, and there will be something on it that I should have known but didn’t because I didn’t connect a couple of dots that somebody else might have, or that a group of people might have if they were all working together.”

Still, more students said that they wouldn’t join one simply because they don’t need to, their logic being that if they don’t need help studying there isn’t that much of a reason to seek out people to study with.

Other students said that they would join a study group if they had a chance for the social aspect, even if they did not necessarily need to it to study.

“Study groups just seem like a good way to meet new people without wasting time that you could use to study,” said Chandra Galloway. “Meeting people is hard, especially with all the work everybody has to do for class, so study groups seem like they would just make it a little easier.”

While most students interviewed had not taken part in a study group, there were a few that had.

Whether or not they were successful was something of a mixed bag, however; some said they might have been useful, but finding the time for everybody to get together was more work than it was worth. Others have found they studied less than they would have on their own due to spending a lot of the time socializing rather than studying.

“Any time I went to a meeting, we ended up [goofing off] and not getting anything done,” said Alex Summers. “It probably had something to do with the people in it, since we were all friends, so maybe if they were people I wasn’t as close to it would have gone better.”

However, others found that study groups could be useful when it came to things they weren’t sure they would be able to do.

“I went to a study group meeting only because it was right before a test,” said Mariah Sherman, another student at Parkland College. “It helped me remember the material, and I ended up passing because of it.”