How to Use Class Quizzes as a Study Guides for Your Exams

My first and foremost thought is not to put yourself in a situation where you have to cram for an exam. College is a means for developing an education and cramming at the last minute makes it difficult to retain that information. Rather than cramming, start the first day of class to be prepared and begin your learning process.

When I was in college, I remember some of the suggestions my professors would offer to me. Listen to your professor. Remember, they know what is on the exam. Ask them for a study guide if they haven't already provided you with one. However, keep in mind that the final exam study guide is just that: a guide. Don't be fooled into thinking if it isn't on the guide, it won't be on the final. Usually your guides on contain a few of the items on the final exam, so if you only use the guide, you might not do as well on your final as you had hoped.

In this article, I am providing you with one of the areas that I feel helped me the most when I was in college and I hope it helps you as well.

When the week before finals arrives, use your class quizzes to determine what you have retained. This allows you to study the areas that didn’t stick.

Here are my suggestions for using your class quizzes as a final exam study guide.

1. Get out all the quizzes you have taken in your class. Erase any marks you made. If you have taken an online class you may be able to just print out another copy of the quiz.
2. Start with quiz one because this is the information you received the furthest back and often tends to be the information that was most likely forgotten.
3. Hide the answer sheet for the quiz.
4. Take the quiz again using a blank piece of paper to write down your answers.
5. When you come across a question that you don’t know the answer to, simple write “Don’t Know” next to it and move on to the next question.
6. When you have finished all the class quizzes this way, you now have a picture of what you learned and what you didn’t learn during the class.
7. Don’t fuss over the answers you got right. These are the areas that stuck with you, so if you come across these questions on the final exam, you shouldn’t have any problem answering them.
8. The questions that you got wrong are areas that didn’t stick so well and you will need to study these. Don’t just memorize the correct answer. Memorized answers tend to be forgotten once you have completed your final. Instead, find the correct answer and figure out why that answer is correct. This will help you retain the information better and protect you against a mind freeze during the exam. Memorized answers tend to disappear during such freezes.
9. Any questions that you marked with “Don’t Know”, these are areas you must definitely study for.

The biggest tip of all: The main idea behind studying for the final exam is not to waste your valuable time on topics you already know. Instead, work on the things you don’t know. The technique I mentioned above will be very helpful to you in determining what you don’t know.

Donna Rivera-Loudon

Donna is an online instructor for two colleges and she received both her B.S. and M.B.A. via online classes. Donna's websites include:

Flea Central...Virtual Marketplace; A Website for the Modern Woman; Tupperware Online