College of Engineering Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Professor of Physics, Kevin Pitts writes about Physics Illinois' curriculum, student life and careers for physics majors: How to Succeed in Physics Courses
The studying methods here sound extremely useful for any subject/course in general!
The below is from the link.
Study every day. Studying one hour per day for seven days is worth a lot more than studying seven hours in one day. It takes time for your brain to absorb and process the concepts, you give it time by studying daily.
Read the textbook. If you don’t like your textbook, go to the library and get another book. There are loads of textbooks that cover the topics of your class, find a different book if you don’t like your book. I’m shocked at the number of students who think they can get by without the text book.
Read the textbook before class. If you walk into class not knowing what will be discussed today, you are already behind. Read the textbook before the lecture. It won’t all make sense the first time, but learning abstract concepts is about repetition and interaction. You will take more away from lecture if you read the book before class.
Don’t miss class. Pay attention in class. Think you can miss class because you already have the lecture notes? Think again. Think you can multitask and check out facebook while in class? Think again. There is a very strong correlation between attendance and grade. And there are a boatload of studies that show that we are terrible multitaskers. Show up and pay attention.
Be an active learner. Studies show that you learn more when you actively participate in class. Try to work the example problems. Talk with your neighbors during the ACTS. Think of a question you would ask during class. (You don’t have to ask the question, just write it down so that you can look up the answer later, or talk to the prof. after class.)
Work with others. If you think you understand how to do a problem, try to explain it to the friend that you are studying with. If you can’t explain it, then you don’t understand it as well as you think. Working in groups is beneficial for everybody involved.
Take the labs seriously. This goes along with being an active learner. Believe it or not, the labs provide an opportunity to actually see up close what’s going on. The labs are designed and developed to aid your learning. Try to predict what’s going to happen before you try an experiment. If you sit back and watch, you aren’t going to get anything out of it.
Study solved problems. This is important. A great way to learn about problem solving techniques is to see how problems are solved. Textbooks have worked examples. My suggestion is to cover up the solution, and try to solve example yourself. This forces you to think about how you would approach the problem *before* you see the solution. After you’ve given it a serious effort, then look at the solution. If you don’t try it yourself, you’ll look at the solution and say, “Yeah, that makes sense…” and you’ve gotten almost nothing out of it.
Practice solving problems. Do you know anybody who read a book about riding bicycles and then was immediately a bicycle expert? I don’t. Everybody I know had to practice, practice, practice to ride a bike. Same with solving problems in physics. It’s true that some people can ride a bike with less practice than others, but everybody needs to practice. Try to solve as many practice problems as you can.
Get help! Often times, you can bang your head against the wall for hours and hours trying to solve a tough problem, or you can get advice from your prof or a TA in about 10 minutes. Course instructors are there to help you, and they want to help you. Their help is very efficient if you come in with concise questions. That means you should try the problems yourself, make a serious effort, and then go in and ask specific questions. If you haven’t tried the problems, or if you go in and say, “I don’t understand anything.” Then it’s hard for instructors to help you.
