There are lots of other great articles on Student.com such as Top 10 Secret Gems For Students In Australia – so be sure to take a look around!
1. Keeping in touch with your classmates
If you’re working on a project with other students, the first thing you should do is get out your phone and download WhatsApp. While you can use this app to chat to friends online, it’s also great for setting up bigger group conversations. Once you’ve created a group, you’ll have the perfect forum to discuss your work with your classmates and generally keep everyone updated on how things are ticking along.
2. Listening to audio books
Listening to audio books is a great way to broaden your knowledge about a particular subject while on the move. The free site Open Culture has a good selection of audio books for you to listen to, though they’re mostly dedicated to literature. If you want specific books for your subject area, you can try out Amazon’s Audible service, which has more than 200,000. You don’t have to pay for the first 30 days of membership which allows you to download a book for free, but after that you’ll have to pay £7.99 a month (which includes a book of your choice every month) – which isn’t that bad, considering the price of textbooks these days.
3. Taking notes
Note-taking apps can be extremely useful when you’re on the go – you might forget your pen and paper for class one day, but chances are you’ll always have your phone with you. Our favourite is the Evernote app, which lets you take notes, share them, clip sections from the web and even sync across devices, so you can access everything from your computer once you get back home.
4. Recording lectures
Lots of phones have an inbuilt recording feature, which can come in handy during tricky lectures or seminars covering a lot of material. You could even use the video recorder for more visual lessons (it’s always worth asking politely for permission to record the session – letting your lecturer know that it’s just going to be used for revision purposes).
Later on, when you need to revise for a difficult exam, you can go over everything again with the information straight from your professor. Think about making some new friends by sending your recordings – or key clips from them – around to the rest of your group, your classmates will thank you.
5. Studying with flashcards
Writing flashcards by hand is generally a pretty tedious and time-consuming process, but thanks to your phone you don’t have to do that any more. Cram is a flash card app that lets you either create your own cards or select some to download from their huge library. Later, you can go over your notes whenever you like, on the bus ride to class or even over a latte in your local coffeeshop.
6. Exercising
Keeping fit can help you with your studies, and working out after sitting at your desk all day is a great way to clear your head. Studies have shown that exercising immediately after learning something new can help you retain the information. If that’s got your interest, there are plenty of free exercising apps around. One example is Workout Trainer, which gives you access to everything from simple stretching routines to bootcamp-style workouts.
7. Meditating
Recent studies suggest that meditating on a regular basis helps to improve attention and concentration. If you’re prone to drifting off while studying, or have a hard time focusing on your lectures, it might be worth giving one of the meditation apps a try. Headspace, for example, was created by a former Buddhist monk in a bid to make meditation more accessible, and comes with short directed sessions that you can try out for free.
Here’s how you can make more friends in your country of study:
12 Things You Can Do To Make More Local Friends When Studying Abroad
8. Becoming more organised
Being organised is key to studying successfully. With an organiser app, you can keep track of your schedule and assignments so you will never miss an important deadline again. InClass is a free app aimed at students, and it will remind you when homework or other assignments are due and will also let you upload your written notes or recordings. Asana is also great for organising larger projects, as you can put in your own sub-tasks and stay organised every step of the way.
9. Avoiding procrastination
As this article shows, your phone can really come in handy, but using one also has some pitfalls. Websites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are only a click away, and if you’re prone to procrastinating they can be hard to resist. If you have trouble staying focused, you can check out internet-restricting apps that let you block distracting websites for a set amount of time, like ClearLock for Android.