Tag Archives: Study Tips

Studying for the WELL AP Exam: 4 Lessons from the Psychology of Learning

An article I recently read on Cal Newport’s Study Hacks blog made me think about how fine-tuning my own learning methods could make my life a little easier.  Here, I’m talking about learning methods in the context of preparing for the WELL AP exam, but these ideas could broadly apply to anything you’d want to learn in the future.  Below are a few lessons, culled from writings on productivity and the psychology of learning.

  1. Improve your technique.  The first point is to start by appreciating the importance of technique.  Psychologists might use the fancy term  “metacognition,” to refer to this kind of “thinking about thinking.”  In the context of studying, Newport uses the example of elite swimmers to drive home the point that focusing on technique is critical to producing better results with less effort.  It’s the difference between cutting through the water like a blue marlin and doggy paddling to barely keep afloat.  Improving study technique may seem obvious in theory, but the challenging part is knowing exactly how to improve.

    Photo by EJ Hersom

  2. Learn out loud.  Many of us know the feeling of going through several pages of a technical book only to wonder what we just read.  Newport recommends actively verbalizing, either to a study group or to yourself.  In fact, teachers often remark that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it.  In a recent articleDan Willingham, a research psychologist I knew from the University of Virginia, uses the GPS analogy to explain why active recall works:

    “Every time you retrieve information from memory, it becomes a bit easier to find it the next time. That’s why students studying for a test actually remember more if they quiz themselves than if they study as they typically do, by rereading their textbook or notes. That parades the right ideas before the mind, but doesn’t make them stick. In the same way, you won’t learn your way around a city if you always use your GPS, but you will if you work to remember the route you took last time.”  

    “GPS, you’re turning me into a mindless zombie…”

    So verbalize and quiz yourself as you study.  For the WELL exam, I’ve written about 450 flash cards that I flip through on the subway or whenever I have a few extra minutes.  If I’m studying in public (e.g., at the library), I try to mouth the words in a quiet mumble.

  3. Handwrite.  At first, I was a little surprised to learn this because I’m a fan of recording everything on the computer.  Note-taking on the computer minimizes physical clutter, it’s neater, more organized, and searchable.  But the research shows that for learning, handwriting works better.  In fact, the ease of recording on a computer is precisely what makes typing less effective.  Because handwriting is slower, the brain needs to do more work to summarize and process the information, which leads to better comprehension and retention.  To extend this lesson, I like to also draw and diagram an idea whenever possible.

  4. Take a walk down Memory Lane.  In a previous post, I wrote about learning a list by visually linking objects to one another in a mnemonic string.  To extend this technique, link this string to a familiar location using the Method of Loci, an old (but effective) strategy used by Greek and Roman orators to memorize speeches.  Visualize a familiar place and associate the items on the list to specific locations in that place.  You can recall the individual items by performing a mental walkthrough.  If you try this once, you’ll realize how much easier this is compared to rote list memorization.  For example, to learn the WELL Precondition features, I started my mental walkthroughs using some thematically-related buildings that I am familiar with: Tado Ando’s Sayamaike Historical Museum (Water), the Boston Food Bank (Nourishment) and Uris Hall (Department of Psychology) at Cornell University (Mind).

References:

If you want to read more about these techniques, you can check out these references:

http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/08/02/the-straight-a-gospels-studying-is-a-technical-skill/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/sunday/you-still-need-your-brain.html

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

Using Vivid Visual Mnemonics to Study for the WELL AP Exam

There’s a lot to learn and memorize in preparation for the WELL exam.  So any sort of mnemonic system you can come up with certainly helps.  Here’s a tip to help with remembering a list.

Back in high school, when I was studying for the SAT’s, I came across a classic book called The Memory Book, by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas. 

If you have a list to remember, Lorayne and Lucas recommend that you string together a series of images, each representing an item on the list.  Create a cartoon animation in your mind, and visualize each item interacting with the next item.  The authors suggest that exaggerations help, i.e., picturing items as HUGE or in giant swarms helps make something memorable.  The scientific literature on memory questions whether you actually need to make your images bizarre, but I still think it’s fun to imagine an outlandish cartoon.

So, applied to studying for the WELL exam, some contributors on various discussion boards have mentioned that for each of the concepts, it’s good to know where the Preconditions end and the Optimizations start.  Say that you’d like to remember that the Comfort Concept has the following Preconditions:

  • ADA Accessible Design Standards
  • Ergonomics: Visual and Physical
  • Exterior Noise Intrusion
  • Internally Generated Noise
  • Thermal Comfort

You might come up a cartoon animation like the following:

  • Imagine a wheelchair (ADA), next to a gigantic (building-sized, 5-story high) adjustable height table.
  • A hydraulic piston lifts the wheelchair 5 stories up to the top of the table, where is a computer monitor endlessly moving back and forth (Ergonomics: Visual and Physical—Visual Ergonomics, Desk Height Flexibility, Seat Flexibility).
  • From the left, a window opens and the wheelchair is bombarded by a swarm of horns (Exterior Noise Intrusion).
  • From the right, the wheelchair is bombarded by a swarm of noisy people and HVAC diffusers, while off to the side, a bunch of people are hunkered down, quietly working at their desks (Internally Generated Noise—Acoustic Planning, Mechanical Equipment Sounds Levels).
  • A hot heat lamp, labelled “ASHRAE 55” lowers down and starts to melt the chair (Thermal Comfort).
  • The heat and smoke from the chair set off a fan (Thermal Comfort Part 1: Ventilated Thermal Environment) and open a window (Thermal Comfort Part 2: Natural Thermal Environment) to help cool down the burning chair.

There you go.  Now you can remember all the Preconditions for the Comfort concept.  Or if this particular cartoon vignette doesn’t resonate with you, feel free to imagine your own.  The effort of creating one helps with learning.

Feel free to share any fun mnemonics in the box below.

In an upcoming post, I’ll expand on this topic of study tips.  Happy studying!

What to Study for the WELL Exam: Compiled Forum Comments

 

What should I focus on to study for the WELL exam? I read through a number of forum comments and blog posts, and compiled this survey, figuring that what was mentioned most often would either be most important to note—either topics that appeared most frequently, were hardest to study, or were the most surprising and required more focus.

Here’s a chart:

Calculations (incl. area requirements)7
Health statistics5
Precondition cutoffs (Preconditions vs. Optimizations)3
Certification and verification guide — how the certification is managed3
Technical standards2
How credits are verified (letter from owner, etc.)1
Anything related to fruits and vegetables1
Scenario-based questions1
Body systems1
Feature requirements1
How the concept affects health and fitness1
Fact-based questions1
Relating the features1

 

If you think this is useful (or if you have some feedback), feel free to leave me a note below.

FAQ: Which Version of the WELL Standard Should I Study?

 

Update (as of July 1, 2017) on the WELL website:

“Please use the January 2017 version of the WELL Building Standard and WELL Certification Guidebook as your primary study resources when preparing for the WELL AP Exam. To learn more about how you can prepare for the exam you can also review the GBCI Candidate Handbook.”

 

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Here’s a helpful response (from April, 2017) to two questions I asked IWBI regarding what to study for the WELL exam.  The WELL building standard is in constant development, and the standard is periodically updated, which made me wonder what guidebook version I should use.  Would I need to keep downloading the guidebooks as they were updated?  Also, on the wellcertified website, in addition to the free guidebooks, there are additional study materials for sale, and it wasn’t clear to me whether there was relevant information in these study materials that wasn’t covered in the official WELL Building Standard and WELL Certification Guidebook.

Other people had asked this question too, so I thought it would be helpful to post the answer.

You can download the WELL standard PDF for study on this page (upper right corner):

https://standard.wellcertified.com

Thanks for the help, IWBI!

 


 

Dear Tyrone,

Thank you for contacting IWBI to learn more about preparing for the WELL AP exam. The current version of the WELL AP exam is based on the September 2015 version of the WELL Building Standard and WELL Certification Guidebook. You are correct that the additional resources available to prepare for the exam would be helpful, but all exam questions are based off the 2015 version of the WELL Building Standard and Certification Guidebook themselves. Therefore all exam content is pulled directly from those two core documents.

Please do let me know if this answers your questions and best of luck in your preparations.

Best Regards,

Julie Skodowski
Associate, Education and Accreditation
International WELL Building Institute, PBC
www.WELLcertified.com

Case 00009659
ORIGINAL INQUIRY:

 

Dear IWBI,

I have a question about which version of the WELL standard to study for the WELL exam.

It looks like the current standard is the January 2017 version. I had downloaded the February 2016 version to study. This page:

https://www.wellcertified.com/your-community

says that “The WELL AP exam tests your knowledge of the September 2015 version of the WELL Building Standard and the Certification Guidebook.”

Also, it looks like there are preparation resources available for purchase. I’m sure these would be helpful for learning the material and practicing for the exam, but I’m assuming that all the content covered by the exam would be covered in the official (free) WELL Building Standard and the Certification Guidebook. Is that correct?

Thanks for the help!

Regards,

Tyrone