Preparing for the Impossible Exam

Last Monday was the first Exam in my ARC 121 Building Structures class. To prepare for that exam, I had used the 20 minute test prep, read the syllabus to know what was being examined and made myself a study guide complete with room for diagrams. However, along with the rest of class (whose average on the exam was a 42%), I did unusually poorly. I am hoping that the way I'm going to begin to apply Anticipating Test Questions to my study schedule for this class will improve my grade for next exam. Last Exam, I studied in groups using a self-made study guide made with guidance from the syllabus. I have included an example of a page to the left. After reading about the Anticipating test Questions strategy, I think something that would have helped my studying efforts would have been to include more of the diagrams referenced in class, since the exam was based on reading and memorizing certain diagrams. It also would have helped to copy down the questions the professor asked about the diagrams in class. Since I am a Visual Kinesthetic Learner, it would have helped me to redraw the diagrams to commit them to memory.

Even though the next exam in this class isn't until April 6th, I have already started acting to prepare myself for the exam. I'm already keeping an ongoing study guide that I add to after every class as part of my 20 minute test prep. So far, I have included questions that were posed both in class and discussions, as well as major concepts that the professor said would be important. Furthermore, I included a column for Diagrams and questions about the diagrams. I think the method of using a graphic organizer to organize study relevant material as I attend more lectures will help when I am creating my Source and Topic Outlines.

On the last test, I was thrown off guard by the convoluted wording of the questions. But now that I can look at the Exam I just took to refer to the kinds of questions asked, I hope the next one will be easier. In my interview with the professor for this class, I asked if there were any resources available to students that could help with practicing relating the equations and diagrams and he said that he didn't provide any examples but the ones in class, and he was reluctant to put the lectures online for fear that students wouldn't attend class. I plan on beginning to focus my class notes more heavily on those diagrams. Now that I am more familiar with the evaluation technique from firsthand experience, I anticipate having less trouble figuring out how the questions are worded.