<p>"Among the problems on college campuses today are that students study for exams and faculty encourage them to do so.</p>
<p>I expect that many faculty members will be appalled by this assertion and regard it as a form of academic heresy. If anything, they would argue, students don’t study enough for exams; if they did, the educational system would produce better results. But this simple and familiar phrase"study for exams"which is widely regarded as a sign of responsible academic practice, actually encourages student behaviors and dispositions that work against the larger purpose of human intellectual development and learning. Rather than telling students to study for exams, we should be telling them to study for learning and understanding." …</p>
<p>I must have been ahead of my time. I rarely studied for exams. :-)</p>
<p>I generally found the best strategy in studying for exams started when I was first doing the homework. If I could get myself to understand a concept in the first place, then I’d still understand it by the time an exam rolled around a few weeks later (since, likely, our current material was building off what we had done before).</p>
<p>I always rocked my accounting exams (for the most part) because we did so many exercises. We had an online app with plenty of problems. It even analyzed which questions you got wrong and gave you more of them (starting with the basics and then getting more complex) to ensure you mastered them. Loved it.</p>
<p>^That’s why I’ve always hated classes that don’t give homework, like my chemistry class. Since the professor doesn’t follow a specific book, doing random practice problems is pretty useless.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, students wouldn’t need to study so much. If we reviewed our notes each week, actually did our assigned writing, and put a little more effort into class discussions, there would be less need to cram at the last moment. But realistically, few students review each week, do ALL assigned reading, etc. </p>
<p>Of course, some of us can get by not doing the above and still not studying It depends on your personal capabilities and interest level in the course. It also has a lot to do with teaching style and whether your professor is putting the material into words you can really understand and remember.</p>
<p>I don’t know about other people, but I find that I retain information better when i learn it under intensive exam-prep conditions. But regardless of that, the nature of institutional education is that there has to be a way to assess students, and if students are going to be assessed it is only fair to give them everything they need to do well.</p>
<p>Like it or not…the Utopian concept that one should absorb everything during class, or while doing problem sets does not work. Exam grades do matter, and preparing for exams is the prudent course of action. I hold a doctorate in Physics, and from my experience there was no way I could reliably do well on an in-class Physics exam without practicing innumerable problems (beyond HW problem sets) in the weeks leading up to an exam. The practice helps build speed and accuracy, and helps expose students to a wider selection of problems. </p>
<p>Of course, if you belong in the genius category, then none of the above is relevant. For the rest of us mortals, however, there is no substitute for hard work and exam preparation.</p>
<p>You cannot simply assume that students can absorb 100% in the classroom. I bring coffee to class to prevent myself from falling asleep (keep in mind there are other students nodding off in class), and I still won’t be able to get 100%. In some classes, it is very difficult to understand concepts the first go. Homework definitely helps reinforce concepts, but homework can never cover 100% of what was in lecture. People tell you to do readings, but sometimes the textbook can be confusing, and still, you may still miss details here and there if there is a lot of reading to do. </p>
<p>Some people absorb better than others. They may study in a different way that works from them, but you still cannot learn from them because everyone studies differently. Everyone is unique; our brains are wired differently. </p>
<p>For the rest of us, we are not above studying.</p>
<p>The author seems to have an opinion about studying and exams which he is trying rationalize in his article. Everyone learns and absorbs material at different rates. Regardless of the degree you are pursuing in college, there will always be certain core courses you have to take that probably only indirectly relate to your major. That is a reality of the educational system. Saying that everyone should learn for the sake of learning and if we did away with final exams, students would retain more material, sounds more like an idealistic hypothesis then reality.</p>
<p>offtocollegemom: you could not be more correct. I took a number of physics, math and chemistry classes in college. The only way I could have done as well as I did was following the same approach of doing practice problems over and over and over. I made sure I could do every demonstration problem in the chapter in my sleep; then every homework problem; then other problems that were not assigned as homework. During my course in Electromagnetic Theory an upper level student showed me an alternative textbook in the library and said that the professor sometimes picks problems out of that book – so I did a bunch of those problems too and that made all the difference. Keep repeating the problems until you get physically nauseated when you look at them – then you know you’re ready for the test!</p>
<p>If my engineering professors didn’t tell me what was going to be on the exams, or allow us to use cheat sheets or notes taken during class, or even our textbooks, us students would have been head over heels screwed over.</p>
<p>the exams make us understand key concepts, things that we won’t remember in detail the next time we see them in industry, until we review them again</p>
<p>Also, for us, understanding the material is mandatory for doing well on most exams, because they require derivations. specific questions also arise that test our general understanding of certain correlations.</p>
<p>nobody has the time to learn everything. either you adapt and delegate your time efficiently, or fall behind and get the short end for the amount of work you put in. I don’t know when you went to school, and what you learned, but I’m pretty sure we’re doing things differently now.</p>
<p>I agree with the idea of not studying for exams. You should be studying the entire time that you are in a class. Each day you get new material and you should be learning at as you go. You should be, but we don’t all do that. Constant study is tedious and sometimes you need a break.</p>
<p>If you are learning something that you will need to know in your daily life within your profession, then you will need to study the lessons with an approach to real life use. It isn’t like you won’t have access to knowledge once you are in a working environment. Anyone can jump online and find out info about something to refresh their memory.</p>
<p>How about there should be no tests! If all the focus is on the tests then we are missing out on learning for the sake of learning. I understand that people think that they only study because there will eventually be a test but what is we just learned because we know that we will use the knowledge later on.</p>
<p>yes thank you, people look at me like I’m a madman when I say this stuff. I have never and will never understand all the crammers out there, imo cramming is more likely to hurt an exam score than help it. And everyone encourages it.</p>
<p>It all depends on the person. Compared to not studying at all, cramming helps a ton for me. Of course, studying in intervals a week in advance is better, but I often don’t end up doing that.</p>
<p>I’ve had quite a few classes that just had research papers and/or student presentations, but no formal exams. I don’t think the learning outcomes were all that much different in my courses that only had exams.</p>
<p>I’ve always wished some classes took advantage of presentations and papers opposed to traditional exams. In my science classes, most people want to go to medical school or graduate school and being able to convey reasonings, logic and improving your technical writing/presentation ability seems like a skill that’s not being taught. Obviously this won’t work in 200+person classes, but in classes on about 60 or less, I think supplementing a traditional exam for something like a paper or presentation couldn’t hurt. My professors say that the best way to know that you understand the material is if you can teach it to someone else. Well…if that’s the case, why not use it?</p>
It depends on your personal capabilities and interest level in the course. It also has a lot to do with teaching style and whether your professor is putting the material into words you can really understand and remember.</p>