Month: December 2022

In Week 3 of Exam Essentials, we’re focusing on Thriving in the Exam Environment.

We’ve already explored how to plan your revision and choose the most effective techniques, but what happens when you actually get to the exam? When the day itself comes, how do you stay healthy, keep alert, and perform your best under exam conditions?

In this week’s workshops we’ll explore these techniques in two settings, first in the online environment, then in on-campus invigilated exams. While there are some differences between these settings, the majority of the tips are the same.

Here are our top three suggestions to get started:

• Stay Healthy – Make sure you’re eating, sleeping, and getting plenty of exercise throughout the exam period, and possibly even during the exam itself (if you’re writing a 23hr exam, for example). If you’re writing the exam in-person, make sure to have a good meal beforehand and bring a bottle of water. If you’re writing the exam at home, get yourself a selection of healthy snacks, like fruit and vegetables, to keep you going.
• Know the Format – Make sure you know what the exam is going to look like. How long is it? How many questions? Do you get to choose, or are they all mandatory? Then, once you get to the exam, look over the full paper first and read every question carefully. It’s easy to make mistakes by jumping in too quickly, but it’s important to understand every question before you begin answering.
• Test your Tech – If you’re writing your exam online, make sure to test the technology beforehand. Locate your exam module, and read any key guides available online. If you have issues in the exam itself, know how you can troubleshoot them, perhaps by using a different browser, clearing your cache/cookies, or emailing Help4U@dundee.ac.uk for support.

Be sure to check back here for Wednesday’s post, where we’ll share the recording of the online workshop as well as highlighting some useful resources about revision techniques, and again on Friday when we’ll pick up on some of the key themes from the week.

Once again, thanks to everyone who joined one of our Exam Essentials workshops this week, where our focus was on Effective Revision. If you missed the workshops, you can view the recording of the online session at https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/5ab52ea85d5f404d82bf174f96633b9d

Meanwhile, here are some of the key takeaways from this week’s workshops:

1. You may not need to change much – talking to people this week, one striking thing was just how much good practice is already going on out there. Many people are using at least some active techniques in their revision, and also recognising where certain approaches are increasingly unsustainable. So it’s really a question of constantly refining your approach, reinforcing your good practice and wherever possible eliminating the less effective techniques.

2. There’s no ‘one size fits all’ – we’ve explored lots of different active revision techniques across this week’s workshops and blog posts, but not all of these techniques will work for you, and the ones you do like won’t necessarily work in every context. The important thing is that you experiment and find out what works for you, and in which situations. Think of it as a toolbox – you use different tools in different situations, and some of them you just don’t use at all.

3. Study with the type of exam in mind – one important thing to consider is the format of the exam(s) for which you’re revising. For example, essay-type exams are likely to require a different type of revision than multiple-choice exams. Make sure you know the format your exams will take, and think about what you need to get out of your revision as a result. Then apply the appropriate tools for the job.

Next week we’re tweaking the format slightly. We’ll still have our regular blog posts with tips, links and the recorded workshop, but Monday’s online workshop will focus specifically on the online exam environment whilst Wednesday’s on-campus session focuses on – you’ve guessed it – the on-campus exam environment. We’d love to see you at one of the sessions.