Introduction

Tests and exams are an important part of the college experience. Doing well on these measures in your classes is an important factor in reaching your goals and developing into a confident, competent college student. The strategies in this section are all designed to foster deep, lasting learning that won’t disappear on the day of the test. Most of the strategies require that you create and work with study materials. Therefore, for purposes of the Study Skills project, some of the strategies should be paired with strategies from the Creating and Using Study Materials section. At the end of the project, you will submit samples of the study materials you have created and used over the semester.

Before you select specific strategies below, you may find it helpful to review the Guide on Avoiding Distractions and Creating a Study Environment in the appendix of this open educational resource (OER).

Select the title of each section below to learn more about strategies that will assist you in studying and preparing for tests.

4.1 Meet with a Tutor

Getting help from a tutor is one of the habits that every student can benefit from. Not only will you get immediate help with the academic issue, but you also develop a supportive relationship that can be helpful for years to come. Some caveats–not every tutor/student relationship works out. You may need to experiment to find a person that works best for you. As the student, you need to prepare for the tutoring session so that it is productive and useful. In math class that might mean coming with sample problems that are giving you trouble or a list of concepts that you need more help with. Don’t be surprised that tutors will often not help with an actual homework problem. Their job is to help you understand the concepts well enough to do the homework yourself. Some students arrange to do their homework in the tutoring center so that they can ask for help whenever they run into problems. What a great idea!

At CNM both in-person and online tutoring is available. You can call (505) 224-4306 or visit the ACE Tutoring website to get information about the times and services available. Students can access a comprehensive list of online services.

If you choose this strategy for your Study Skills project, keep track of dates and times you meet with a tutor as well as the topics and assignments you work on with the tutors. You can report results from assignments, projects, and quizzes as well as how you feel about the tutoring process when using this strategy.

4.2 Use Cornell Study Sheets

This strategy should be used along with strategy 3.4 Create Cornell Notes in Chapter 3: Creating and Using Study Material.

If you select this strategy for your Study Skills project, as soon as possible after your Cornell notetaking session, preferably within eight hours but no more than twenty-four hours, read over your notes column and fill in any details you missed in class, including the places where you indicated you wanted to expand your notes.

Then in the recall column, write any key ideas from the corresponding notes column—you can’t fill this smaller recall column as if you’re explaining or defining key ideas. Just add the one- or two-word main ideas; these words in the recall column serve as cues to help you remember the detailed information you recorded in the notes column.

Once you are satisfied with your notes and recall columns, summarize this page of notes in two or three sentences using the summary area at the bottom of the sheet.

This is also an excellent time to meet with another classmate or a group of students who all heard the same lecture to make sure you all understood the key points.

Now, before you move onto something else, cover the large notes column, and quiz yourself over the key ideas you recorded in the recall column. Repeat this step often as you go along, not just immediately before an exam. Using this strategy will help your memory make the connections between your notes, your textbook reading, your in-class work, and assignments to help you succeed on quizzes and exams.

Remember to save your Cornell note-taking sheets, which should include your original notes as well as any changes you have made when reviewing them. With your project, you can report results from this strategy by describing what worked well and what you might change with your Cornell notes in the future.

4.3 Study with Flashcards

Using this strategy will also require you to use the strategy 3.4 Create Flashcards in Chapter 3: Creating and Using Study Material.

Flashcards involve the mental process of active recall where one is given a prompt (the question) and then must produce or recall the answer. Active recall is far superior to learning information than simple recognition memory. Recognition memory is simply the ability to identify something as familiar or a situation that has been encountered previously. For example, when walking across campus you might recognize a student you have in one of your classes, but not remember their name. To remember their name involves the recalling of their name from memory. Another example would be that when taking a quiz or test your might recognize the word “Inner Guide” as a term that was mentioned in your course material and class lectures. Active recall would be knowing what the term means and how it fits into the course material.

Once you have created your flashcards you will need to use the cards to learn the material. Keep the following points in mind when using flashcards:

• Say answers out loud when studying
• Study your flashcards in both directions
• Use space retention, which means reviewing the cards over time

Various systems have been developed involving the concept of spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is the reviewing (studying) of material at systematic intervals rather than learning the information in a short time period, which can lead to quick forgetting.

Spaced repetition focuses on long-term retention of new information. For example, you will remember more information if you study for an exam for an hour every day for a week leading up to the exam than if you “crammed” and studied seven hours the night before an exam.

To use space repetition for studying with flashcards, new flashcards and more difficult flashcards are shown more frequently while older and less difficult flashcards are shown less frequently. A simple method to do then is when studying the flashcards to sort them into two piles—those that you know and those that you don’t know.

A simple system to use to study your flashcards is to view them as a stack or pile in which you store your flashcards. The stack or pile is then sorted into several piles, labeled 1, 2, and 3 (you could choose more piles as well). As you study, you then put each flashcard into the appropriate pile. If your flashcard is new you will put it in the first pile, where you repeat (practice/review) the flashcards every day. Flashcards that you know will be put into the second pile. Flashcards in the second pile are reviewed every second day. Flashcards that you know well are moved to the third pile and are review every third day.  Each pile has a different repetition interval, and the flashcards that you know well, get promoted to the next pile. When you cannot answer a flashcard correctly, you move it back to the first pile where the cycle starts again. A good rule of thumb is to spend 20 to 30 minutes each day reviewing your flashcards.

When studying your flashcards make sure to say the answer out loud prior to turning the card over to check your answer. This ensures you are recalling the information (answer) rather than recognizing the information when you turn the card over.

Watch the following in-depth video on how to create and effectively use flashcards to study and learn material:

If you select this strategy for your Study Skills project, you will need to keep track of the date, time, and number of flashcards in each pile at the end of each study session when you are studying your flashcards. To do this, create a chart like the example shown below.  Then each time you study, fill in the information. You will submit the chart with your project.

4.4 Listen to Self-Created Audio Recordings

By creating audio notes you have saved time and engaged your brain–now it’s time to use those recordings. To use the recordings you’ll need to listen to them and rerecord them where you need to add further explanation or clarify information. Where your recordings seem unclear go back to the source information, reread the text, or ask your instructor to clarify. Then rerecord or add your new understanding of the material. One great advantage of audio notes is you can listen to them virtually anywhere–in the car, on a walk, on a bus, etc. See the following video for more details:

If you select this strategy for your Study Skills project, use your recording forms to reflect on how you listened to the recordings, how you feel about learning material this way, and how useful the voice files are.

If you choose this strategy, it is strongly recommended that you also choose strategy 3.6 Create Audio Recordings in the Creating and Using Study Material chapter. That way you will receive credit for both creating and using the audio files.

4.5 Teach What You Learn

If you choose this strategy, you are going to focus on teaching what you learn to someone else. You can even go through the motions of speaking to someone who’s not there. That may sound a little strange, but the power of this technique is that it forces you to state things simply, and you can only do that when you understand the material. The following video gives a nice four-step process for how to do this:

You’ll also get introduced to Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman who was revered for his ability to explain complex ideas in simple, understandable ways. This is harder than it sounds, but the effort put in produces deep, lasting learning.

For your Study Skills recording forms, you can reflect on how you felt about teaching what you learned, how helpful it was to learning material for your class, and the results you experienced by using this strategy.

4.6 Space Your Study Sessions

Having a schedule you follow for studying is critical to success in college. Studying when you ‘feel’  like it is a recipe for disaster. Very few people ever ‘feel’ like studying–there’s always something preferable to do. So having a study schedule and keeping to it is one of the best ways to keep on course. A study schedule needs to include several times a week you plan to read, write, study, work on homework, etc.

Watch the following video to learn about spaced repetition.

If you choose this strategy for your Study Skills project, you’ll need to create a personal schedule that reflects the times and days you have available for studying. You might develop a study schedule that looks like this:

Weekly Schedule

You’ll use your study logs to reflect on what you do during the study times and how well you are able to keep to your schedule. There will be times when you do and times when you don’t. Be honest about your efforts to keep to a study schedule. It will take a lot of self-discipline and sacrifice to stick to your schedule, but the results will be worth it.

4.7 Use Interleaving

Interleaving is a studying technique that calls for students to mix up the content that is being studied. It’s tempting to want to spend an entire study session on one sort of problem or subject area and then move on to different material later. However, studies show that mixing up the kind of problems or material you are studying can result in deeper, lasting learning. If you have set up a weekly study schedule you can add interleaving to it by planning to revisit material from a previous chapter or unit or including different types of problems or question sets. For example, in a one-hour study session, you might want to spend 20 minutes on science vocabulary, 20 minutes working a variety of math problems, and then 20 minutes reading for sociology. Although this may seem confusing it has the effect of ‘waking up’ your brain each time you switch to a new study task and this helps build long-term memory.

For your study skills recording forms, you can include copies of your interleaving plans/schedules and you can reflect on how well you were able to stick to them. You can also reflect on the interleaving process, how helpful it was to learning material for your class, and the results you experienced by using this strategy.

4.8 Practice Testing

One way to practice test is to create flashcards or an actual test by writing test questions. This takes time, but there are online programs such as Quizlet that make it a little easier. Textbooks and ebooks often include practice test questions you can use. You can also ask an instructor or a tutor to provide practice test materials. Practice testing is an effective study strategy because it helps you practice retrieving information, which is what you want to be able to do when you are taking the real test.

One of the best ways to practice test is to work with a partner. Ask that person to pose a question and then see if you can explain it to them, and teach them what you know. You may find you know more about the subject than you thought . . . or you may realize quickly that you need to do more studying.

For your study skills recording forms, be sure to include the details about the practice tests you created, what classes you used them for, and so on. You can also reflect on how you felt about practice testing, how helpful it was to learning material for your class, and the results you experienced by using this strategy.

4.9 Mindmapping

Mind Maps are a visual, creative way to review and visually represent information that you need to learn and retain for a class. Typically they are created from your class notes and textbook and become a visual summary of the information you may need to know for a test or exam. See the following video for more details and a demonstration of the procedure:

If you choose this strategy for your Study Skills project, use your study logs to reflect on how you felt about creating mind maps, how helpful they were to learning material for your class, and the results you received on tests and exams.

4.10 Review and Revise Missed Items On Tests

Creators learn from their mistakes and seldom make them twice.  After taking a quiz or test and having it returned, do not just look for your score and file the document. Rather, get in the habit of carefully reviewing the test or quiz and correct the answers you missed. Go back to the textbook and/or your notes and find the section with the answer to the question. Review the information and then write down the correct answer to the question.

Reviewing your tests/exams and revising incorrect answers is an important activity in any course, but is absolutely essential in courses that build directly on previous knowledge, such as mathematics, foreign languages, and your FYEX 1110 course. Carrying forward incorrect information is a plan for future failure. Making sure you have the correct information sets you up for future success. Get in the habit of correcting mistakes on all tests and quizzes you take.

If you select this strategy for your Study Skills project, you will need to review the tests and quizzes you take and correct all missed questions. To do this, write the questions you missed on a sheet of paper, and then write the correct answer to the questions. This document will be submitted at the end of this project along with your study logs.

Licenses and Attribution

Sections 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8 were adapted from OpenStax College Success, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/college-success/pages/1-introduction.