I'm Karen Dacy from Academic Skills and this video is to help you prepare a
revision program for your exams.
If you've got exams you will have to revise.
You probably have a lot of questions.
When do you start?
Where do you start?
What are your highest priorities and what can wait for a while?
How much revision do you do on each topic?
Have you covered everything you need to cover?
The most important thing to remember is,
Revise early.
Revise often.
Cramming may work for you for some of the time,
but sooner or later it will let you down,
especially as you get into the later years of your course.
There will be just too much to know.
So, start building some regular revision into your timetable early in the semester,
and build up as the semester progresses.
One good way to stay calm and prepared for exams
is to create a revision program.
You will need one revision program for every exam.
Fill in the subject at the top and the date and time of the exam as well as the venue,
then fill in the number or date of the lecture in the first column,
and the topics covered in the second column. You can copy and paste these from the course
outline given to you in week one or on the LMS,
then make several columns for revision sessions.
We've put in four, but you may need more or less than this.
Early on in the semester, take some time,
for example, an hour or half an hour to revise a lecture
or topic that you've covered, then rate yourself in the first column.
For example, 'Good' ... 'Ok' ... 'Needs work' ... 'Difficult' or even 'Get help'.
Find a rating system that works for you.
For second, and all other revision sessions you don't need to work through in order.
Choose a topic that was difficult or needed work last time and do a second revision.
Then rate yourself again.
Your ratings of 'Difficult' should move up to 'Needs work'
or 'Okay'. If you're not making progress,
you should have enough time to seek help from a tutor, a fellow student,
or by going back to the set texts and notes
But don't just focus on your weaker topics,
you should try to move around from topic to topic
according to where your need to revise is greatest
either because you haven't learnt the content fully
or because you have not revised it for a long while.
Your aim is that by SWOTVAC you'll have given attention to all the material you
need to cover. There will be no big surprises and you should be feeling
reasonably confident about all topics.
Distributing revision over several sessions, rather than one marathon
appears to result in more flexible and stable learning, so you will retain
learned material longer.
It also makes it easier to apply the facts you've learned problems in the
exam as the facts are not tied to a sequence.
If you revise material repeatedly,
spreading the practice over days or weeks
you actually need less total revision time on each topic to be learned than
someone who crams at the last minute.
You will have time to discover your weak points and seek help or do extra study
to bring them up to standard.
You can now use the SWOTVAC as it was intended: to consolidate your learning,
work through problems and calmly prepare yourself for the challenge of performing.
your best in the exam.
You will find a copy of this revision planner underneath the video.
Download your revision planner now. All the best with your studies.