Technology plays a crucial role in education as it provides students access to a myriad of information that are otherwise unavailable offline, and starting this year, around 12 million students in Nigeria will benefit from it with the recently launched Learning Passport. This will undoubtedly allow more students to prepare for tests and overcome challenges that they might face along the way. To maximize the benefits that students can get from accessing information online, they must also have dependable software in order to help them do their schoolwork in an efficient way. Here are the top three student software that can help learners boost their academic performance.
Office Suite
The most basic software a student needs is an office suite that they can use to write their papers, make spreadsheets, and develop presentations for their classes. There are a lot of free online office suites out there, including Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, Libre Office, and Microsoft Office Online. These are all easy to use and have functionalities that can help students complete their required submissions with ease. For example, if a student is trying to meet a required number of pages for an essay, Word Online show space between pages. This way, the student would exactly know how many more pages they would have to write. Meanwhile, for group work, Google Docs allows a student to invite others and edit their document in real time.
Note-Taking Software
Another important software that a student can use to improve performance in school is a note-taking app. Studies show that strategic note taking improves a student’s memory, understanding, and overall grades. As such, students who take better notes generally have higher grades. Note-taking software such as Evernote and NoteLedge can help students in improving their academic performance. Not only will they save time noting down their study materials as compared to writing everything by hand, these note taking software also allows students to highlight important texts, include pictures in their notes, and record voice reminders. These, in turn, can significantly boost their academic performance.
Research Assistant Software
Research also plays a big part in learning, and literature shows that students who know how to conduct research are more likely to graduate and are more competitive when searching for jobs. However, conducting research can be time consuming and overwhelming for some students. A research assistant software can make this task easier. Research tools and software such as Zotero and ReadCube allows students to easily collect and curate the materials they want to include for their research studies, cite their sources, and share it with others if the research requires collaboration. This will make researching easier without taking away the skills that they can gain from this learning activity.
As technology evolves, it is important that learning practices must develop, too. This means giving students access to online data as well as providing them with tools, such as the ones mentioned here, that will help facilitate their learning. Not only will these help them make studying easier, but in the long run, these can also help in improving their academic performance.
