Understanding anatomy and physiology often begins with building a foundation of basic terminology and identification of structures by name and location. Yikes, that means
memorization.
A lot of folks dread memorization tasks because they simply
don't know how to do it in a quick,
pain-free manner. Once you know the tricks of memorization, it's not that bad.
The essential trick is to
practice, practice, practice.
That means
every day, several times a day, if possible.
However, this will only work if you spend
just a few minutes at a time practicing. If you try to get in all in one long session, it won't work . . . or at least least is won't work very well. In fact, the "long session approach" can sometimes burn you out so badly, it'll be hard to make yourself study the same topic again.
One of the easiest ways to practice painlessly is to
make and use flashcards. I have a previous
blog post and a
study tip web page and even a
YouTube video devoted to methods of using flashcards to study A&P effectively.
My friend Monica Hall-Woods (another A&P professor) reminded me recently of a website called
Quizlet.com where you can easily make a set of flashcards online (for FREE) and use it to study and to quiz yourself. In fact,
Quizlet.com gives you some alternative methods to quiz yourself, including some fun,
game-like activities.
The more practice sessions you do on
Quizlet.com, the more you'll almost
effortlessly pick up the basic facts that you are trying to learn.
Quizlet.com helps you
keep track of what you've studied and
how you are doing.
You can also upload photos from
Flikr.com . . . which means that you can take photos of your lab specimens with your smartphone, then upload the images into a set of flashcards!
Another great feature of
Quizlet.com is that you can form
study groups. This allows one or more users to post and share sets of flashcards related to a particular topic.
Quizlet.com also lets you
use flashcard stacks that others have created. (
Warning: be careful those you use are
accurate before using them to study.) Here's a stack of cards that I created simply by cutting and pasting a list I already had into the
Quizlet.com editor:
Try it! Use different options for quizzing yourself and playing games. I think you'll
have fun with it. Which is the point . . . the less pain, the more gain. At least in this case.
Let me know what you think! And use the comment feature (below this blog article) to
post your favorite Quizlet.com sets you've made or found . . . so other A&P students can benefit.