Revision - try testing yourself

Revision 

It's getting near that time of year again and exams are approaching. What is the best way to retain information? One study suggests there are 2 methods that are really effective:

1. Testing yourself
2. Spreading out your revision over time (this is the best method).

So it's not a good idea to leave it to the last minute and it's a good idea to come up with some ways of testing yourself.

Testing Yourself

Your lecturer may have access to past papers but these aren't always easy to get hold of so how else can you test yourself?

Flashcards

• Create physical flashcards - the BBC website shows you how to do this  here. 
• Create online flashcards using free online tools like Adobe Spark, Quizlet or StudyStack. You can also create them in Google Slides.
• Use existing flashcards on these websites - BUT remember you don't know who has created them so check that the answers are right first.
• When using the flashcards to test yourself, remember to keep those you don't get right to one side. This is a good way of showing you what you need to read through again. Then go back to these and  keep using them to test yourself until you get them all right.

Use existing quizzes from our Electronic Resources

Some of our online resources have quizzes and case studies built in so you don't have to create them yourself.

Primal has quizzes and case studies on anatomy and physiology. Just choose the relevant module e.g. cell biology or the skin.

Hairdressing Training has quizzes and activities in it. Choose quizzes from the home page, refine by which level you are on by using the menu on the left and then choose what you want to revise. Remember to do the quizzes several times until you get them all right.

The Health and Social Care resource has a risk assessment quiz, but the others are for reflective practice rather than for revision.

Learning Styles - do they matter?

Learning Styles

For a long time, it has been accepted thinking that everyone has a preferred learning style (as originally described by Kolb). According to the Skills you Need website, there are 8 styles (but different models have different numbers of learning styles):

The linguistic learner

The naturalist

The musical or rhythmic learner

The kinesthetic learner

The visual and spatial learner

The logical or mathematical learner

The interpersonal learner

The intrapersonal learner

You can do a simple quiz here to help you identify which style(s) you prefer and the Skills you Need website outlines definitions for the different learners.

Theory of Learning Styles challenged.

However, more recently this accepted theory has been challenged. It is now considered by many to be a "neuromyth". An article published on the BBC last week called Exams 2018: The 'myth' of the visual learner outlines the latest research that matching teaching to a student's preferred learning style doesn't necessarily help them learn any better. If you are taught in the way you prefer, then you may think you've learned better but in fact this may not have any affect on your ability or your resulting marks in an assessment. Research suggests that other factors have an influence on this such as what subject it is or whether we are new to a subject or not.

Carol Lethaby's article "Four reasons to avoid learning styles - and one alternative" on the British Council website summarises the research and recommends helping learners make connections with what they already know.

Photo: CC0 from https://pixabay.com/en/learn-word-scrabble-letters-wooden-1820039/

Learning styles and revision

Some references to the research which is summarised in these articles would be useful so that the argument for both sides could be followed up. There isn't the time to look further in to this here, but some advice from the BBC article for revision may be more useful to finish with:

• Test yourself
• Spread study over time
• Make you revision varied - mixing up problem types and topics. 

Just reading through notes is unlikely to be the most effective way to revise.

Exam stress and Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week - Stress: are we coping?

Next week is Mental Health Awareness Week and as part of this the LRC will be hosting a meditation session on Tuesday 15th May. There are limited spaces so it is on a first come first served basis.

Stress and Exams

It's that time of year again and for many students doing exams it can be a difficult and stressful time. While stress can't be avoided, there are things we can all do to help manage our stress. Here are some resources available on the internet from reputable organisations which might be of help.

Teenmentalhealth.org has a useful factsheet on stress generally. It explains that

• stress isn't the same as anxiety, 
• most stress isn't bad for you (whilst avoiding it may well be) and
• the key to managing it is to learn how best to deal with it.

It explains that you can change how your body feels by

• changing how you think about your stressful experience
• focusing on the problem and thinking of solutions
• using proven techniques to reduce your body's stress response

Online Resources

Student Minds - the student mental health charity - has five main themes to help with exam stress. 

The BBC website has plenty of advice here and here.

The Student Room gives some practical tips.

Have a look at this light-hearted page on how NOT to cope with exam stress.
If you are a lecturer you may find this newspaper article from the Guardian 2 years ago useful, but the links at the bottom of the article do not lead anywhere.

If you want to try some different ways to revise to make it more enjoyable, have a look at our blog entry 4 weeks ago or click on the revision label on the right hand side of the screen.

Stress: are we coping? book display in the LRC
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

Finding different ways to revise

Finding different ways to revise for exams

It's that time of year again with lots of students both at PRC and UCP doing exams in the near future.

Over Easter one expert reported that students should have been revising for 7 hours a day during the holidays. If this is something you didn't do (and not everyone agrees that this is wise), don't despair, concentrate on what you can achieve from now on and work hard. However, it doesn't have to be boring.

Here are 3 tips from the websites mentioned later in the blog.

• Break your revision up in to manageable chunks and plan a timetable.
• Find different ways to revise - use flash cards or mind maps, watch a video or make up useful mnemonics etc
• It is important to revise actively - this means concentrating and focusing. Creating your own resources like flash cards or mind maps, for example, will involve your brain and force you to think about what you are revising and therefore be more effective than staring at words on a page.

The student room website has lots of advice and tools which you can use to help you revise. Just creating them may be a different way to revise initially. You can also access resources already created by other students (but you may want to be sure they are correct first).

For example, create your own revision timetable.
Create your own flashcards.
Create mindmaps.
Create your own crosswords and quizzes.

The site also provides revision tips and tools for university students including a Uni revision app.

You will need to sign up to use the resources but the tools are free to use otherwise.

Have a look at the following TEDx talk about  how using drawing can help you remember more - even if you don't think you can draw.

The BBC website also has lots of  revision  advice and resources (e.g. how to remain motivated). These are aimed at GCSE and A level but the principles remain the same. They also have a revision app.

Electronic resources provide revision activities.

If you are a Health and Social Care student or Hair and Beauty student, there are quizzes and videos as part of the online resources available from our Electronic Resources page. Primal also has quizzes and case studies if you need to remember human anatomy for your exams.

Revision tips and memory techniques

Revision tips

Exams are fast approaching and lots of students are finishing off their coursework and starting to revise everything they’ve learned during their course.

We’ve been searching for some tips for you on the internet. Take a look at this short BBC Newsbeat video.

The BBC also have lots more resources at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zw8qpbk with links to advice on the National Citizen Service website too.

If you are prone to worrying about your exams, the BBC published an article earlier this week : Exam Stress: a revision guide for the anxious which might be helpful.

Memory Techniques

More generally, a lot of us would like to know how to remember things better whether it's remembering someone's name, reminding ourselves to do something or memorising information for an exam. 

In 2105 The Daily Telegraph published an article Nine tips to improve your memory which also has a quiz to test how good your memory is. You may want to have a go.

BBC Radio 4 has an old archived page on improving your memory which includes tips such as 

• Break things down in to chunks
• Space out your learning (don't try to cram it all in at the last minute)
• Write it down
• Use imagery to associate something you are learning with a visual image
• Assign meaning to something (great for numbers eg remember the numbers 1945 by thinking about the last year of the 2nd World War).
• Learn it right the first time (so focus when you are learning).

For those of you interested in more information on how the memory works and further techniques to improve it, we have books in the library by Tony Buzan, for example, who is an expert in memory techniques. The books are found around 153.1.

You may also want to listen to this Tedtalk by Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do.

Planning your revision

Starting to revise

Although it’s the holidays next week, exams are nearly upon us and so it is a good time to start planning your revision.

Library+ subscribes to Which magazine and they have put together a guide for creating such a timetable and have pulled together tips from other students which might help you.

http://university.which.co.uk/advice/student-life/creating-a-revision-timetable-that-actually-works

Photo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/pen-writing-notes-studying-8769/

Study Stack

Some of you might like the idea of creating your own flash cards and revision activities and you can use a web resource like Study Stack to create these – whether you are student wanting to make your revision more enjoyable or a tutor wanting a way to help your students revise. Just the process of creating these activities will help you memorise your subject.

There are some existing flashcards on Study Stack which you might find useful but beware as none of these are checked by anyone for accuracy so you want to be sure they are correct before using them. Once you have your flashcards , your flashcards can be converted into other activities (eg hangman, crossword). There a  few tutorials on YouTube but they do not appear to be from the providers of Study Stack themselves so you might want to bear this in mind.