Laptop screens fade to black. Chairs squeak as they’re swiveled around by their bored occupants. Shadows lengthen as another day moves into the past. And somewhere, a college student smacks themselves in the head with a binder because it’s time for their test and they didn’t study. It’s usually not for lack of trying, of course—that’s why the laptops were out and open, and, at one point, actually in use. It’s just that for whatever reason, studying doesn’t seem to be the main activity when students get together to actually study. Chatting is more fun. Whatever flavor of social media is more fun. Heck, sometimes zoning out and gazing out the window is more fun. But why doesn’t studying in a big group setting work? And what might work instead?
If you want an example of the futility of group studying, look no further than the group study rooms of the library at UAlbany. Few tables and chairs there are to be found unoccupied, many textbooks are to be found open, and many PowerPoints are to be found displayed on laptop screens; however, few conversations to be heard there have much relationship to the material in the textbooks and on the PowerPoints. The group study room was an entertaining place to sit and listen in on comings and goings; it was not a place where serious study was observed.
So what was actually going on, instead of studying? One table of girls were talking about random things—parties they’d been to, the weird New York weather, and dresses so form-fitting they couldn’t be gotten off. Their textbooks were open, but their phones were resting across the pages. Their computers were open too, but the girls, so swept away by their conversation, had let them go to sleep.
Unused computers falling asleep was a visual theme in the group study room. On a different day, another table of girls had congregated to help each other work on their essays for some class. When the girls sat down, they were determined: they were going to work for an hour and get their essays done. An hour later, their computers had gone to sleep, and one of them snapped the group back to reality, putting her phone down and reminding them that they needed to focus, because they really did need to write. Laptops were turned on, and the rattle of typing filled the air for a little bit, but gradually it died out and was replaced again by chatting. It was another forty minutes later when one of the girls exclaimed, in horror:
“Guys, this essay’s due in in 15 minutes and I only have half a page done!”
Idle chatting is not the only form of distraction to be observed in the group study room. At one point, an entire table of guys was observed sound asleep. Their heads rested next to the keyboards of their darkened laptops, or on the pages of their textbooks. Notebooks and backpacks sprawled around their table, and pens lay like walkways between laptops, but no studying was to be observed.
Your sanctimonious author himself is not immune to the dangers of group studying. I study for my economics tests with one of my friends from class, and undoubtedly he and I spend more time debating the various issues of the world and society than we do what impacts the market for loanable funds or what shifts the aggregate supply curve. From our attempts at studying, however, I have become aware of one graph-able relationship: there is an inverse relationship between friendship and studying—as he and I have become better friends, the amount of studying we’ve done has seriously decreased.
But college isn’t full of students who flunk. Clearly, people find ways to learn their material and get their projects done. So then how can studying be done effectively? From what I’ve observed in other parts of the library, and through personal experience, the most effective studying is done alone. People sitting at library computers, in their little cubicles, generally look much more focused and productive. Phones are looked at less, conversation is all but eliminated, and much more typing can be heard. In general, the bigger the group at the computer, the less work it looks like gets done: two people chat, but documents are created and problems are worked through. Any group of more than two, however, tends to look pretty unproductive, falling victim to the distractions of conversation and the smartphone.
The main flaw of group study seems to be that it breeds distraction, and the more comfortable the group is with each other, the more distracted they get. Friend groups seem to spend most of their study time socializing. I would have to do more research, but I would hazard a guess that group study works better for some kinds of homework than others—as the girls detailed above showed, essay writing in a group doesn’t work out too well. However, if you have to create a group project where each person presents, group study is a necessity, and can occasionally turn out relatively well.
Overall, however, it seems that individual studying is a more effective method than studying in a group—it’s pretty hard to get into a conversation with yourself that’s so intense your computer goes to sleep. So, college students: find a quiet corner, stick in your earbuds, and get down to work. Don’t be smacking yourself with your binder the hour before the test because you didn’t get to studying while you were studying for it.
