University exams were an incredibly difficult time. Many people, including myself, were dealing with personal problems, and all of us were dealing with the effects of the global pandemic. It can be extremely challenging to focus whilst not in your purpose-designed study room in University halls; you might have a noisy family or a bad wifi connection, or little desk space. The issues can feel like they are mounting up. Many of us, including myself, even considered deferring exams until later in the summer. Fortunately, I studied hard in April despite the challenging situation, and was able to experience University summer exams in the peculiar set-up during the pandemic. This blog post details how I studied for University exams during lockdown and what the exams were like. These exams were different from normal University exams in many ways:
1. The 'No-Detriment' Policy.
2. Their Online format.
3. Their duration.
No-Detriment Policy
This policy was adopted by most Universities in the UK
during the pandemic. It basically meant that, so long as you achieved the
pass-mark of 40% on your exams, you could not finish the year with an average
lower than that which you achieved before the pandemic (around mid-March time). So, for example, if you had a 2:1 60% average
for your first year of University, so long as you got 40% in your exams, you
would finish your year with a 2:1 or higher. Your exam grades could not bring
your mark down, only up. If you performed worse in your exams than you did before the pandemic, your grade would be your average that you obtained before the pandemic. If you did better in your exams, this would be your final year average. This provided students with a lot of relief and allowed us more confidence in sitting my exams instead of deferring them.
Online Format
Given that Universities across the UK were forced to shut
down their campuses, exams could not be taken in person. It is possible that
some Universities might have cancelled their exams completely, simply
graduating students based on their grades achieved throughout the year (coursework and Winter exams). However, in the case of the University of
Exeter, all exams were moved online. Some people did, however, have exams
replaced with coursework. In my case, my exams were published online and we
could sit them from our bedrooms. The submissions were electronic so I wrote my answered on a word document and submitted them through BART (the platform used by the
University to submit coursework). This was in pdf format. This was the same procedure as submitting coursework, so I was already very familiar with the
process. All I had to do was convert the word document into a PDF, state the word count and
submit.
Duration
The duration of the exams was very dependent on the subject and how
lenient your lecturers were. There were two different exam formats: (1) We had to complete the exam in a fixed duration
(eg. 2 hours) with some time allowed at the end for you to submit your work; (2) Alternatively, the other option was a 24 hour exam. In this case, they specified the time that they expected
you to spend on the paper (for example, 2 hours). However, you could use the whole
24 hours if you so desired. This did mean you could start the exam at any time
of the day, whereas this flexibility was not offered in the
option 1 exam format. Luckily, all my exams were option 2 (24 hours long) so I felt less
pressured. Lecturers even said they felt this was a better exam format, since it
would allow you to form a proper argument instead of "word-vomiting" all the
facts you had memorized into an essay.
My Study Routine
Reading Lecturer Exam Advice
Before preparing for any exam, you should go onto your online
learning platform and look for your lecturer's exam advice. Often, this can
come in the form of a word document... if you're lucky! Sometimes, it can be
hidden in lecture slides, on recap recordings or somewhere hard to find. For one of my modules, there was a huge in-depth word document preparing us for the
exam and telling us what to study. This is important as it is not necessarily
the case that everything you studied that year will be on the exam. In my case,
for some modules, content involved in coursework was not compulsory on the
exam. So read carefully and make a strategy about which areas you should study,
especially as there are many different approaches for an exam- in a history
module, for example, we could study one topic in depth or the entire module more
vaguely. (I chose the first option!).
Reading through lecture slides
Next, you should look back through lecture slides needed for the
exam. Lecture slides are so different for each module- some are concise and
already in a format perfect to revise from. Others have some informative slides
and some which feel more like fillers. For this reason, I divided my slides into two categories: (1) Powerpoints which I would read through and edit into a
more efficient revision form (2) Powerpoints which I would study directly from.
Either way, reading through the entire powerpoint is a good method to refresh
your memory especially as you might not have touched some of these modules since last
year. Put on some music and devote time to reading through and
highlighting parts you don't understand which you can then go back to and make
notes on.
For the powerpoints less easy to revise from, I ended up making summary documents. I would copy and paste important information off the
lecture slides and then delete the irrelevant sections. I would then make the
information into bullet points and shorten sentences into more concise
information easier to revise from. Next, I also highlighted the key points
and printed off the documents since I prefer to study from paper instead of a
screen where possible.
Source Research
Since I do a humanities degree, my work often involves analyzing
historical and archaeological sources. For some modules, you get to pick from a
certain number of sources and prepare these beforehand. For others, all the images on the
powerpoint slides could be used as sources in the exam which you are supposed
to analyse. In one of my modules, we had to prepare four sources to make sure
at least one of the ones we had researched in detail came up on the exam. For
this, I would research in a lot of depth, looking at background information,
historical facts, opinions of other critics and making sure I understood all of
the text itself. To help me, I printed off the sources and annotated them and
made sure I had done the extra reading provided by the lecturer for each
source. I also had notes from my seminars on each source (my seminars were devoted to source analysis). For the modules where our sources were powerpoint images, I would
just make sure I knew the purpose of each source; what supporting evidence it gave and what it was trying to prove. Since these were open-book exams, I knew I could go
straight to the powerpoint during the exam and did not need to have done as
much research before, unlike the other exam which involved more in-depth source analysis.
Extra Reading & Preparing
Critics
For some modules, I felt as though I could get by without doing much
extra reading. I definitely learnt that it was near-impossible and definitely
not essential, in my opinion, to do all the extra reading set for you. However,
in bigger 30 credit history modules, I found it definitely helped to do a bit
of extra reading. However, I did not read entire books, simply short articles
and chapters on the topics I wanted more background knowledge on. This also was
a quick way for me to write down some of the beliefs of critics which I could use to support my argument or to contrast against the opinions of others to then reach my own conclusion.
THE EXAM
Prepare my materials
I always made sure to set my alarm at a good time so that I would have
time to eat breakfast and get all my materials ready for the exam.
This included all my notes, books and the powerpoint slides. An important thing
to note is that, in some Universities, for these online exams, we absolutely
had to download the powerpoint slides beforehand. This was because you were
unable to access the online learning page 24 hours before the exam and during
it in case the system overloaded and left some students unable to access the
materials. With any important assignment at
any time of year, it is important to download the files because, especially
with Exeter's system, the online platforms tend to crash a lot! Anyhow, before
the exam, I would also ensure I had a tidy workspace to enhance my productivity
and also had refreshments on hand so that I would get less easily
distracted.
Look at the questions &
identify relevant lecture slides
Once you have your exam paper open, you should select the questions you want to
tackle very carefully. It definitely helped that I had 24 hours to do all of my
exams, giving me plenty of time to decide which questions I would be best at. I
would also bring out all of my materials and lecture slides relevant to these
questions. If I wanted to do any extra bits of research, now was also my
chance, something we were allowed to do given that it was an open-book
exam.
Draft
Next, I would write a draft of each answer. I don't tend to write things
in a very orderly way- I write paragraphs which I then merge, tear apart or
switch around. For this reason, online exams really suited me. I spent about
two hours writing a draft of the entire exam and reaching roughly the word
count which was specified for the exam. After that, I would usually take a break
for lunch.
Edit & submit
Around this time, I would read back through the draft I had prepared and
edit it very carefully. I would make a number of different drafts, improving it
with each read through and adding any information I thought was missing.
Between drafts, I would take a short break or go for a walk. Then, by around 5pm,
when I was happy with my exam, I would submit it and try not to touch it again
for the rest of the night! Some people tended to finish their exams very fast
especially given that the lecturers intended us to only spend about two hours
on the exam. However, I spent longer on mine simply because I wrote less
quickly and took it purposely at a slow pace to enjoy the process more. I also
did numerous edits to make my writing better. At the end of the day, there are strategies which will help nearly everyone when it comes to exams; however, everyone's exam process is extremely different and there is no one right way. Do what works for you.
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