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dr. phil on science education
Ideally you should do both. Usually you end up having to take tests by yourself, so you need to be able to work the material by yourself. On the other hand, working with a small study group (2 to 4 people) can be a very effective way of finding your own weaknesses, to say nothing of the fact that helping another student is a very good way to reinforce your own knowledge. Don't know anybody in that large lecture class? If you want to join or form a study group, just before class or just after, stand up and call out, "I'm looking for some people to form a small study group. Is anyone interested?" You'll find that often there are lots of people who would like to be in a study group, but they "don't know anyone" and won't stand up and ask. It's not the sort of thing that your instructor can help with -- people's schedules are too different, so you need to talk with the other students on your own and get organized yourself.
Any way you'd like it to. But consider that you probably have to follow the same sorts of things needed for individual study: Time, Place and Environment. It's a little different because now you have to coordinate the schedules for multiple people and you have to meet in a place which can handle multiple people, too. Some study groups meet once a week, some meet every day, some meet just before an exam. There's an old movie called The Paper Chase about first-year law students at Harvard and they have these formal study groups where they prepare study guide notebooks for each other and lead question & answer sessions for each of their classes. This is overkill for what you're doing. (But check out the movie if you want to laugh at how tough those poor Harvard law students have it.)
You'd be surprised. Everyone knows something, even if it just asking another question. Over time, though, you'll get more comfortable and you'll contribute. But if you don't show up, you won't get anything out of your study group.
Last Update: 15 September 2006 Friday.