Quizlet user spotlight: How a pre-nursing student saved her grades with Quizlet

Today we’re bringing you the latest in our series of user profiles, where real users tell us their stories and share how they are using Quizlet to reach their goals.

Noni grew up in a family of nurses. She also enjoys biology, so when it was time to think about her goals, the choice wasn’t difficult. She’s now a pre-nursing student in her sophomore year at Towson University in Maryland, where she is studying for a career as a midwife or in women’s health.

Adjusting to remote learning

Like many other students around the country—and the world—Noni’s classes are entirely online.

“I don’t want to say [it’s] problematic. I don’t know if I’m learning, though,” she said. “We’ll see at the end of this if I retain any information.”

Online learning is more disruptive for the subjects that require a hands-on approach, something that Noni has seen in regards to her anatomy and physiology class. When her professor showed students different parts of a skull with a model on Zoom, she became confused.

“But I just know that if I could touch it, I could understand the structures and placements and stuff like that,” she said.

One benefit to online learning is that lectures are recorded. Noni takes advantage of that by revisiting parts of lectures that she needs to review, or to flesh out her notes.

A wake-up call

A good student who didn’t need to study much in high school, Noni had a rude awakening when she got a C in chemistry during her freshman year of college. She had to think back on her study habits to determine where she had gone wrong. She’d go to class and take notes, but didn’t do much beyond that.

To turn her grades around, she needed a new strategy. Part of that strategy was to choose easier classes to round out the slate of heavy science courses she needs for her major. (Though this semester, she’s taking psychology and a music composition class that has turned out to be a little more work than she bargained for.)

Noni is also taking advantage of tutoring sessions and is diligent about staying on top of her work. Her goal? To get a 4.0.

“To get a 4.0. Or at least an A in microbiology and an A- in anatomy and physiology,” she said.

Finally, she is being strict with herself by making time with friends contingent on study time. And she’s using Quizlet.

Getting ahead with Quizlet

Her dedication has paid off. She scored 100% on a recent microbiology exam, which she attributes in part to a study guide she created on Quizlet.

“I was up until 4 a.m. and I made all of my Quizlets for my A&P lab and lecture, and they’re organized beautifully,” she said.

Noni loves paper flashcards. She appreciates that there’s something about the act of writing them out that aids memorization. But she finds making Quizlet study sets to be much faster. And her Quizlet Plus membership allows her incorporate images, which is really helpful for some of her courses.

“The big thing is having the picture. You can’t necessarily do that making paper flash cards unless you’re going to print everything out,” she said.

Finding a study routine that works

Historically, Noni has found that “stress is the best motivation.” She has been able to succeed by starting her studying three or four days before an exam. But when her professors began assigning deadlines the same week, she realized she was going to have to stagger her preparations.

With a lot of reading-intensive classes and videos to watch, Noni organizes her notes by color-coding them. She inputs them into a Google Doc that she can search for information when she needs it. From there, it’s also easy to copy and paste into her Quizlet study sets.

She waits to make those study sets until she has grasped some aspect of the material and is able to put some of it into her own words. Otherwise, she finds, “I can regurgitate the information, but don’t necessarily know what it means.”

How Noni uses Quizlet study sets

Everyone has their own way of using Quizlet’s versatile features, and Noni is no exception. She finds timed games stressful, so she doesn’t use them. But the Learn and Write functions are her go-tos.

When she makes her study sets, she includes pictures and the bold and italic text functions that are included with Quizlet Plus. She also appreciates the smart grading feature that gives her partial credit when answers are close.

Quizlet study sets help her identify and fill in the gaps in her subject knowledge by identifying the ones that she needs to work on and allowing her to easily go through all the material at any time.

Like many other students around the world, Noni is using Quizlet to reach and exceed her goals. Are you?