Faculty Innovation Center

Exams: Making the Most of Study Time

As another semester ends, student anxiety is visible. Often they are showing the strains of juggling too much and realizing the end is in sight, yet they aren’t as prepared as they could be. As their professor, you can guide them in their study approaches so, at the very least, they are better able to get through final exams. Some of you may feel ill-equipped to coach students in how to learn and instead feel best suited to teach engineering. If you stop, however, and think about how you learned and what habits of mind helped you get to where you are today, you should be able to find some particular practices worth sharing with your students.

While there is educational research that provides recommended study habits and hopefully students get exposed to these practices throughout their University experience, it is still helpful to share with them basic approaches to studying. The following suggestions have been made by your colleagues here in engineering and they seem particularly relevant at this time in the semester as you help your students enter the final phase of Spring 2006.

Suggested hints for students as they study:

To practice, set up realistic exam situations. For example, time yourself on an old practice exam. Then use the results to help guide what you should study, but save the actual “working through” these problems until you are nearly ready for the exam. Then, use them as practice exam to help your test taking skills as well as to point out your weaknesses.
Build a powerful vocabulary. Engineers must use language very precisely and say exactly what they mean. To do otherwise, can have negative consequences and students must internalize this type of thinking and dialogue. “Tighten the bolt pretty hard” is quite obscure when compared to “Torque the bolt to 150 ft-lbs.” Speaking precisely takes some practice, but for engineers a lack of precision can result in dire consequences.
Realize that you need to work on your study skills. Study systematically by:
- Setting a goal
- Selecting how you want to study (practice problems, teach a peer, diagram concepts, etc)
- Checking your understanding
- Completing what you set out to do
- Thinking about your studying and revise, repeat, etc.

Suggested hints for students as they take examinations:

Read through the entire test first. You may think this takes a lot of time and you don’t have time to waste, but that is flawed thinking. By reading through the exam, it allows your subconscious thinking to be working the problems your conscious hasn’t yet recognized. Furthermore, it helps you to see where to allocate your time – some problems will require more time and you need to budget time in your test taking
Realize the goal of a test is to maximize your score on the whole test, not just the score of an individual problem. Getting full credit on problem 1 doesn’t help if it is the only problem you have time to do. Get the easy points and all points you know you can earn right away. Keep in mind that setting up problems correctly is generally worth a fair amount of partial credit. Thus go back later to get the “detail points” or work on things less certain.
When time is short, quickly jot down how you would approach the problem. You may earn some points for this because the goal is to get all the points you should, based on what you know.

"Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment."

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, and dramatist.

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