Did you ever wonder if there was a way for the average student to improve their learning abilities? Sure, there are simple tools, such as SQ3R, but what about a more comprehensive, detailed approach to learning as a whole?

Memory trainer Graham Best, who once demonstrated his memory skills on the Alan Thicke Show, spent more than 3 decades as a teacher in the Vancouver school system, and spent much of that time figuring out exactly what students could do to improve.

The result was a course you could purchase at his now defunct memory-learning.com site (still viewable via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine).

While the paid course itself is no longer available, the free overview that came with the course still exists. This overview was called 12 Things I Wish My Students Knew, and was available as a series of 12 videos. The first one, not surprisingly, was titled First Things First, and is shown below:

The complete series of 12 videos are still available on Google Video, and are listed below in order. Most of the tips are simple (yet effective), and just take a little extra time versus doing things the same way and getting the same results.

1. First Things First
2. Be Prepared
3. Get Organized
4. Learn to Read Right
5. Schedule Your Time
6. Listen and Take Notes
7. Hand in Neat Work
8. Ask
9. Help Others
10. Test Yourself
11. Do More Than You're Asked
12. Use What You Learn

Granted, the videos do occasionally refer to things that are taught in the now non-existent paid course, but often a little extra searching on the internet will help you discover the details you are seeking. If you know a student who is struggling, you might want to alert them to these videos as a means of helping them.