Think First

Turn studying, assignments, and AI use into learning that lasts.

College and university students are expected to manage assignments, exams, feedback, deadlines, group work, and now AI, often before anyone has taught them how to direct their own learning. The result is familiar. You study for hours and still blank on the exam. A major assignment arrives and you freeze, unsure where to start. You use AI, then wonder whether it helped you learn or quietly did the thinking for you. One rough week goes by, and the whole term starts to feel unrecoverable.

Think First was built for those moments. At its center is the Learning Ownership System, seven repeatable moves for directing your own learning: Understand, Plan, Practice First, Monitor, Adjust, Verify, and Transfer.

Instead of offering a pile of disconnected study tips, Think First puts one coherent system to work on the problems students actually face:

You do not need to read Think First from page one. A Find Your Problem index maps 30 common student situations to the page that can help. Quick, Core, and Deep levels let you choose how deeply to work through a problem, depending on the importance and complexity of the task, the time and energy you have, and whether the same difficulty keeps returning.

Nothing in the book is tied to a term or start date. You can begin in your first week, halfway through a term, or the week you decide it is time to rebuild how you study.

This is a book you write in. The tools give you space to work directly on the page. For important academic work, reusable Core tools include an Assignment Learning Plan and Review, a Pre-Exam Learning Plan, and a Post-Exam Learning Review. Comprehensive assignment and exam tools provide additional structure for complex or high-stakes work.

Grounded in research on how students learn, Think First brings together self-regulated learning, metacognition, retrieval practice, feedback, and responsible AI use in a practical system students can put to work immediately. It was written by Peter Arthur, PhD, Professor of Teaching at the University of British Columbia and a recipient of the Killam Teaching Prize.

Think First is also designed for use by instructors, academic advisors, learning strategists, librarians, and student-success staff in first-year seminars, study-skills courses, academic advising, learning center programs, student-success initiatives, and conversations about responsible AI use.

It is not another planner or a collection of generic study hacks. It is one coherent system for taking ownership of your learning in the age of AI.