Do Your Students Have a Game Plan for Studying?

I recently reread an old post I wrote way back in 2011. The issue is still salient—how students intend to study for exams and how they actually do. Most students have good intentions regarding exam preparation. If asked, they will tell you they plan to reread the text (a few may be honest enough to admit they’ll be reading it for the first time) and they’ll spend time with their notes, rereading or maybe recopying them. Others may review homework problems, work on additional problems, and devote considerable time going over that old test you’ve made available. All of them will tell you they’ll start studying several days before the scheduled exam and they uniformly believe the more they study the better.