NU108 Unit 3 Study Plan Example

Nineteen Hours Planned, Eleven Found: A Study Plan Built From a One-Week Time Audit by a Composite Working Parent Starting Prelicensure Nursing, With Spaced Retrieval Sessions Fixed to Real Times and a Two-Week Check

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

NU108: Health Professions Transitions

Unit 3 Study Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The student, schedule and hours are composite; times and counts are bracketed where they are illustrative.

The Audit

For seven days, [Tasha], a composite first-term student, recorded each study session on her phone as it ended: start and end time, place, what she did, and how many times she was interrupted. She works [24] hours a week as a unit secretary and has two children, ages [6] and [9]. Before the audit she believed she was studying about [19] hours a week, the amount her program advisor recommended for her course load.

What the Audit Found

The log showed [11] hours of study across [9] sessions. Six sessions began after 9:30 p.m., once the children were asleep, and averaged [52] minutes. Two sessions on her lunch break lasted about [20] minutes each. One Saturday session at the library lasted [2.5] hours and produced, by her own note, the most work of the week. Interruptions averaged [four] per evening session, mostly phone notifications and one child waking.

What she did in those hours mattered as much as how many there were. About [70] percent of the time was spent rereading lecture notes and highlighting the textbook. She did practice questions only once, the night before a quiz, and scored [64] percent.

Interpreting the Audit Honestly

Three findings stand out. The first is that her estimate was about eight hours too high, which is common when study time is guessed rather than recorded. The second is that her most productive session was the one with a fixed place, a longer block and no phone. The third is that most of her time went to the study methods that feel productive but help memory least. A large review of learning techniques judged rereading and highlighting to be of limited value and gave its highest ratings to practice testing and distributed practice, spreading study over time, as high (Dunlosky et al., 2013).

The problem was not only too few hours; it was that most of the hours went to rereading, which feels like learning but leaves little behind.

The Plan

The plan makes three changes, each tied to a finding.

1. Replace rereading with retrieval. Each session begins with ten minutes of answering questions from memory, using the end-of-chapter questions, flashcards she writes herself or the program's practice question bank, before opening the notes. She checks answers afterward and marks any she missed for the next session. In a well-known experiment, recalling a prose passage from memory beat restudying it for retention after a week, although the restudy group predicted they would do better (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).

2. Space the material. Instead of studying one topic for three hours the night before a quiz, she reviews each topic in shorter sessions spread across the week. A review of spacing studies found that spreading practice over time produced better retention than massed practice of the same total length (Cepeda et al., 2006).

3. Fix sessions to times and places. Sessions are written into her calendar with locations, and her phone stays in another room during evening sessions.

The Weekly Schedule

Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 12:15 to 12:45 p.m., hospital break room: flashcard retrieval on that week's material.

Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00 to 9:30 p.m., kitchen table after the children's bedtime routine, phone in the bedroom: practice questions followed by targeted reading of missed topics.

Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., public library, while the children are with their grandmother: longest session, covering the week's hardest topic and a mixed review of earlier weeks.

Sunday, 7:00 to 7:30 p.m.: plan the week and write new flashcards.

This schedule totals about [9.5] hours of protected time, plus reading for class. It is fewer hours than the original goal of [19] but more than the audit found, and the methods are stronger. She will add an evening session if the two-week check shows she needs it.

Obstacles and Responses

Two obstacles are likely. If a child is sick, the Saturday library session moves to Sunday afternoon at home, with the same retrieval-first method. If a shift runs late, the evening session becomes a fifteen-minute flashcard review rather than being skipped. Writing the fallback in advance means a disruption changes the session rather than canceling it.

How She Will Check

After two weeks she will compare three things with the audit: hours logged, share of time spent on retrieval rather than rereading, and her score on the next quiz. A goal is set for each: at least [9] hours a week, at least half of study time on retrieval, and a quiz score of [75] percent or higher. If the hours are met but the score is not, the next step is to look at which topics were missed, not to add more hours.

References

Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x