This page contains information to help you maximise your study session including organising information, categorising information visually, and identifying topics that are likely to be on the exam.
Structuring your study sessions
Before you begin your study session, think about how you will use your time. Having a strategy will help you to get the most out of your study and avoid procrastination. Here's one way you can structure your session:
Revise: 5 mins
Spend the first five minutes selecting the topic you are going to study and dot point what you already know. Use this to assess what you don't know, or don't know well enough.
Decide: 2 - 3 mins
Spend 2 - 3 minutes deciding what to learn. Don't study what you already know, look for the gaps in your knowledge, i.e. what you don't know.
Learn: 45 mins
Once you've decided what you need to learn, use active learning and revision techniques to learn your topic area.
Check: 5 - 7 mins
Spend 5 - 7 minutes checking what you have learnt. How do you know if you have learnt anything? Do a dot point summary of what you have learnt and check it against the main topic content/text. If you have missed any key points, you will need to relearn them at another time.
Ways of organising information
There are many ways of organising information. Try some of the techniques below and see which ones work best for you.
Organising information under topic heading
Use lecture notes and course guides to identify the most important topic. Summarise the main ideas and revise by making mind maps to show relationships between ideas.
Summarise your notes under topics
Key points
Supporting points
Details
Writing supporting points
include important details and examples
Use arrows to show connections between ideas
e.g. long-term poverty → negative health outcomes
It is useful to colour code your comments and ideas
Organising information in groups
Instead of trying to remember hundreds of bits of information, organise information into logical groups.
Using mind maps
Mind maps can be very detailed if you are building a plan for an assignment or brief, or if you are using them to organise your revision.
Transcript here
Using post-it notes
Post-it notes can have handy summaries of topics or be used to form mind maps. They are easy to change, add to or delete.
Identify the topics that are likely to be on the exam
Another way to get the most out of your study sessions is to identify topics that are likely to be covered in an exam and focus your attention on these areas. Here are some tips for doing this.
Attend revision sessions
Review the course handbook:
look at the course objectives
identify the main issues/topics that the course covers.
At the end of each lecture:
highlight the areas that the lecturer has emphasised are important
think about how this information might be examined in the final assessment.
Review past exam papers:
what type of questions have been asked, how many?
Are any sections compulsory, what can be taken into the exam—notes, calculator, formulas?
