Planning is something you need to learn, and sticking to a plan as well. Help students with long-term planning by conducting interim checks. Students are bombarded with various tasks during their studies from many different information sources, such as emails, schedules, and lessons. Additionally, the student period is the time when most young people have to find a balance for the first time between their study tasks, part-time jobs, social life, hobbies, sports, and vitality. That's a lot of balls to keep in the air. It is therefore not surprising that one in three students has difficulty with time management and planning. This partly explains the increase in stress at many educational institutions. More than half of the students experience stress symptoms. Students still need plenty of support in the planning process, especially with tasks assigned to them by others. Your memory can only handle a limited amount of information at a time: if you try to learn more than that, things will also be forgotten. You remember information much better when you learn in short bursts and then review it later. Additionally, students can learn more effectively through planning by working with goal setting. At a later time, they can test themselves to see if these goals have been achieved. Help students learn to plan by providing structure. To help students with their planning, you can break the assignment into parts and set short-term deadlines and/or create feedback moments. In this way, you teach students to work on something step by step and on time. Also, explain to students how they can set priorities (Eisenhower Model): they should also take repetition into account. Also, tell students that their own planning is meant to provide an overview and that they can always adjust it if they find it is not working. Planning is a skill that requires practice. Additionally, creating a behavior plan can greatly help with planning. A behavior plan is intended to make homework and studying a habit. A behavior plan contains two different components: - A trigger: a signal that clearly indicates to you that you should start the desired behavior - The behavior itself: doing homework or studying in this case. A trigger can be a behavior (e.g., dinner), an environment (e.g., coming home from school), but also a day or time. The behavior should be described as specifically as possible, for example, doing math homework for 45 minutes on Monday and Thursday evenings. A behavior plan might sound like this: “On Monday and Thursday evenings, after dinner (6:30 PM), I will spend at least 45 minutes on my math homework”. You can divide the planning process into three different components: gathering, organizing, and planning. First of all, it is important that students collect and store their tasks in an 'external memory', such as a to-do list on paper or a digital medium. The working memory can only process approximately a maximum of seven tasks simultaneously. After the tasks have been collected, they need to be organized, prioritized, and sometimes divided. Which tasks belong together, which tasks need to be done first, and how can large tasks be divided into manageable subtasks that can be planned? Only when the first two steps have been completed can students create a logical time schedule and place their tasks and subtasks with deadlines in the agenda.
Van Huisseling, A., Keiman, D., Van Liere, N., Mourisse, L., Ohlenforst, T., Pleijers, D., & ÂVennes, A. (2018). Welzijn onder studenten: Radboud Cares. Radboud University. Te downÂloaden van de website scienceguide.nl via het artikel Nijmeegse studenten maken actieplan voor studentenwelzijn.
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Hartwig, M. K., & Dunlosky, J. (2012). Study strategies of college students: Are self-testing and scheduling related to achievement?. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(1), 126-134.
Universiteit van Amsterdam & Hogeschool van Amsterdam. (2015). Stoplichten: StudentenÂgezondheidstest UvA en HvA studenten. Te downloaden via de website van studentengezond heidstests.nl onder het kopje resultaten/onderzoekresultaten.
Sierhuis, D. (2019). Stressfactoren onder studenten. Amsterdam: ASVA.
