We're leading up to SWOTVAC which, for UQ students at least, begins this coming Monday. I thought I'd share with you some tips to enhance memory for exam material, starting off with the importance of the context in which you learn material. I will talk about research in a very general way, and I'm not wasting time to actually back anything up with actual references because that's a waste of time - you won't check the references, and these tips are to help you, so if you don't want to trust that this s*** is true then you're the one at a loss.

Simply, to be able to recall an event or piece of information, you need to encode it, and then you need to be able to retrieve it effectively. When we experience something, we don't just encode any single piece of information, but instead we encode everything that is happening at the same time. When we later try to recall a single piece of information, our brains can be assisted by not just trying to recall anything specific, but the entire context in which we first learned the information. This can be taken to any extreme you feel necessary.

Study area: For example, the absolute BEST way to study for an exam would be to set up the exam room in which you'll be taking the exam, and get every other student to sit there in the exact format that they will be in during the exam, at the exact same time your exam is scheduled, with the exact same lighting conditions, heating, cooling, noise etc etc. Obviously, this is unrealistic, but the implications are that you need to make your study area as close as possible to the exam area. Don't have loud music playing, because when you're sitting in a quiet exam room trying to think of something, it'll be more difficult because your brain will remember the information in the context of listening to loud music. I'm going to study with ear plugs in the entire time, and when I sit the exam, again I'll wear ear plugs.

Smells: don't have any food scraps or drinks or anything lying around that will play with your olfactory sense. Humans are highly susceptible to context conditioning with smells. I'm going to only use one anti-perspirant and put it on before I study and before exams.

Clothes: I'm going to be extreme this semester and always study in a pair of jeans and my favorite shirt. Of course, I'll wear the same thing to exams. This is obviously made difficult by the fact that some exam rooms are AC'ed like the South Pole, while others are heated like hell. Temperature context can affect learning too, so the best thing is to add a layer of clothes or just dress so you're at a comfortable temperature - avoid extreme conditions at all costs, and make sure you're prepared to put a jumper on, or take one off during the exam to stay comfortable.

Timing: obviously, you're probably going to spend far more hours across days and weeks studying than actually sitting a single exam, but this tip is simple: make sure you're studying material for a given exam AT THE TIME THE EXAM WILL BE ON. If you have 8 o'clock exams, don't sleep until 10am everyday and start studying after then. Get up early and start studying by 8am. Similarly, if your exam is late at around dinner time (like one of mine that starts at something stupid like 5.45pm), make sure you're studying for that exam at that late hour. Also, don't EAT during your exam times, because you won't be able to eat during your exam. If you get hungry during your exam, it'll make it more difficult to remember stuff that you learned while you were eating.

There's obviously some other contextual precautions you can take, but above are a few examples to explain the point. All of this stuff should have an effect, albeit a small effect, on how well you can recall information for your exams.

Good luck!

i used to do zero study the entire semester and then just cram like a motherf***er in swotvac (lols typo)

what i found worked best for me, was old exams, as many as i could get my hands on and do them into the ground, after rereading the semesters reading and taking down notes on what i thought was appropriate, reading and making sure i understood the gist of what was doing:

lecturers are lazy as and most exams were just old questions with different variables

Where were you when I did uni?!

I study, while eating, listening to loud music, in a desk with papers strewn everywhere, I get up constantly and do other s***. I chat online, browse QGL etc etc!

Imagine the marks I could have got! lol

Hehe... like I said, this won't make a dramatic difference. The main factors in effectiveness of study are probably things like motivation, attention, concentration and specific study methods. These tips are just to help that little bit extra:)

Good read billy :)

Mostly anyway (you're your)

Thanks; fixed.

Man you take that s*** seriously.

f*** doing that. life isnt about studying and making the f***ing heating and lighting conditions the same.. its about doing as least as possible and winging it =)

yeah well some exams are harder than others.

I'm going to try this. I'll let you know how it goes.

my best work is done in boxers, ask pave's mum.

Mmm yeah, i've got a couple of 8am exams this semester, so i'm going to start getting up a lot earlier than usual (10-11am) over swotvac so i'm used to working at that hour.

f*** doing that. life isnt about studying and making the f***ing heating and lighting conditions the same.. its about doing as least as possible and winging it =)

When I was at uni, I called this philosophy "the BME method" - BME stands for "Bare Minimum Effort".

This method was instrumental in getting my degree and I strongly encourage others to follow it, as long as you don't mind it taking 11 years to get an undergrad degree

BME ftmfw

i also subscribe to bme

but i must be much smarter than trog, coz mine only took 5 years

we got taught that s*** in high school. private > public eh. it works i reckon. same as if you drink coffee or smoke while studying, you need to do that before the exam.

BME represent

Context for me, be pumped full of caffine. A coffee just before exams = coffee just before study. Suits me fine.

Now I'm about to quickly go over how many lectures I need to go over before my exams hit, is looking at 3 lectures a day until my first exam then 2 each day after that.

Also, Past exams are gold mines. Some of them will have very similar questions over the last few papers. You can bet your GPA that if that happens you'll get a similar question appearing.

Also for best effects. Go over your lectures notes (assuming you've been going to lectures) grab a previous exam and do it without looking stuff up. After that you know what you don't know and can go study up on it. Then do the prac exam again in a few days (a different one if you can). Hopefully your performance will be much better and the questions will seem very straight forward.

If you don't have practice exams, the next best thing is to read your lecture notes and pretend you are the lecture setting the exam questions and pick stuff out that you would ask. Multi-choice, Short answer and Essay. If you do that you'll notice that certain types of information will be excluded from the exam (anything that doesn't fit neatly into those 3 categories usually).

I've done that a few times and have been pleasantly surprised when a few of my questions pop up in the exam, easy marks.

I WOULD NEVER EVER, EVER, EVER do what billy is suggesting above.

The problem with this is that if anything goes wrong, your whole 'world' collapses and your performance might be affected. You are better off never thinking about this sort of s***. Sure, study in a quiet, comfortable room without distractions. But don't worry about all this other s***. You are better off practicing past exams in a busy cafe IMO. Being able to do tasks in worse conditions would give you more benefit, just in case everything goes wrong on the day, you wont go into some kind of freakout mode.

Unless you are trying to maintain a 7GPA or some s*** billy, I think you are trying too hard :P

Hay Mr Hardball, do you know much about the theory of 'Learning Modes' or something like that. It is where you have a dominate way of processing information, like visual/kinesthetic , visual/sound, or something else?

I am with trog on the BME method.

The only time I didn't apply BME was when I truely enjoyed a subject.

BME all over my transcript

so embarrasing

I WOULD NEVER EVER, EVER, EVER do what billy is suggesting above.

The problem with this is that if anything goes wrong, your whole 'world' collapses and your performance might be affected. You are better off never thinking about this sort of s***. Sure, study in a quiet, comfortable room without distractions. But don't worry about all this other s***. You are better off practicing past exams in a busy cafe IMO. Being able to do tasks in worse conditions would give you more benefit, just in case everything goes wrong on the day, you wont go into some kind of freakout mode.

Unless you are trying to maintain a 7GPA or some s*** billy, I think you are trying too hard :P

Great point Qmass, and this my girlfriend actually argued with me that you should study in as many different areas as possible, in as many different circumstances, which is the exact opposite of what I just suggested. This would be a great method for being less anxious for exams, and might help in cases where something goes wrong. However, some anxiety is good for performance.

I guess you have to learn from experience how you react when you go to exams. Generally, I plan everything out well enough to get to my exam on time, leaving plenty of time to eat and relax before hand. If, for example, I was unable to wear the same clothes on an exam day that I wore when I was studying, I personally wouldn't be too phased by it because like I said, this stuff will only have a small effect, and if I wear similar clothes then the effect will probably still occur anyway. But if I was someone who totally stresses out and would be in tears if some condition changed, then, yes, I'd probably take SOME caution in using this approach.

Moral of the story: be weary of how you personally study and function around exam time. The stuff listed in this thread will help improve recall, but does not take things like anxiety and last minute panic attacks into account!

BME all over my transcript

so embarrasing

^

bme made my transcript about twice as long as it needs to be. burn it

smell is the most powerful memory recall aid ever. it's wierd. i'll smell something from my childhood and start thinking about things i thought i'd forgotten.

Well... apparently, you won't ever "forget" anything, you'll just lose the ability to recall it. Same diff I guess.