Exam Preparation Using a Five-Day Study Plan (5DSP) [Strategies]

Introduction and Definition^[1]

One of the difficult transitions to college revolves around knowledge acquisition. In high school, teachers do most of the heavy lifting to help their students learn. Once you reach college, that onus of learning shifts and now you, the student, are expected to do the hard work of learning after class with the information you gain in class. College students will often report that they thought they studied well for an exam, yet ended up making a D. Sometimes this is due to cramming the night before the exam; often it is due to passive study strategies.

Importance

Having a well-thought-out study plan can reduce anxiety, especially during a week with multiple exams. It provides a systematic approach that ensures you study everything related to an exam. Using active preparation and rehearsal strategies is of vital importance. Active preparation is the process of creating or making the study aids or tools that you will use to learn the material. Active rehearsal (or retrieval or recall) means determining what information has been moved to your long-term memory for later use and what still needs more practice. The rehearsal process can help you figure out what you already know and where to put your time.

Examples

Ideally, a student should study at least five days in advance of an exam. This allows you time to build and strengthen your neural pathways and can give you more assurance that the information will be there when you need to access it. This doesn’t mean that you are studying all day, every day, however. Spreading the hours of studying you need (typically 10-12 hours per exam) over five or more days yields better retention of information for your brain.

The first step is to divide up your study materials into at least four chunks (or parts). You can always increase the number of days for your study plan but it’s best not to do less. A chunk can be anything you want—a chapter, a topic, a week of material, or some other part. If you don’t have enough information for at least four chunks, consider dividing a more difficult part or a larger chapter into smaller chunks.

Example: If you only have one chapter for the exam, but that chapter has eight sections, each chunk could be two sections.

To figure out how many days your study plan should be, each chunk should equate to one day of study. Then, add one extra day for flexibility.

Example: If you need to study six chunks of material, your study plan should be seven days. 

Once you determine how many days your study plan needs to be, you can identify in your calendar when you should start studying by counting backward from the day before the exam.

Example.: If you have a Monday exam and want to execute a five-day study plan, you should start no later than the Wednesday before.

At this point, you should decide the order in which you will start studying the material. The most common way is to start with the oldest material and work up to the newest. This is often the easiest way because you go to the first day of the lecture and work your way up to the current material. This can be most effective in classes where the material builds on itself class by class or has a particular order.  Another option is to work on the information from hardest to easiest. Whatever order you decide, write it down. This way you can check off items as you create study aids for each topic.

Once you’ve figured out what material to cover and in what order, the next step is to determine what kind of study aids you’ll create for each chunk. At a minimum, you want to create two study aids, at different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy  One to help you understand the basics of the topic and one to help you tie together concepts at a higher level of thinking. Be sure to write these down. If you’ve already created some study aids previously for these topics, now is the time to fine-tune them and make sure they contain everything you need to study well. Ideally, you will let the material speak to you and create a variety of study aids for each topic, not just the same thing every time.

One caveat to this is for classes that focus on problem-solving. One of your strategies will probably be working through problems. So the key here is to find ways to add variety to how else you work with the material more conceptually. Often homework problems are plug and chug and at the lowest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. However, exam questions are at the application or analysis level. So it is imperative to create study aids that help you understand the ins and outs of the theory or concept, or that give you a deeper understanding of how the formulas work as a secondary strategy. This work can bridge the gap between easier homework problems and harder exam questions.

Now that you have decided what study tools to create, you need to determine how you will do active retrieval/rehearsal with those tools each subsequent day. Active retrieval involves trying to write out or talk through your study tools with minimal cues, such as making a blank chart and filling it in from memory, teaching a topic to your pet rock, explaining a concept map to your study group, etc. Your brain wants variety (from different types of study aids) but it also needs repetition. This is why you use what you create on every subsequent study day. Otherwise, why did you spend time creating something if you weren’t ever planning on using it?

Active retrieval can often be a challenging step. Many students report not needing to study very much or in much depth in high school. So needing to push yourself outside your comfort zone can be daunting. As humans, we don’t want to be uncomfortable, so we tend to take the path of least resistance. It is recommended that you do active retrieval “outside of your head” so you can truly evaluate how much you know and make any necessary adjustments before the exam.

As you get closer to exam day, you should see your list of topics that you are shaky on get smaller while your list of topics you feel confident about grows. A great way to self-test early is to give your study aids to a roommate, classmate, or friend and have them quiz you on concepts and any connections between them. You could also do this by making a list of concepts and writing down everything you know of each one, focusing on elaboration.

Finally, decide how you will do a timed self-test before exam day. You can get potential test questions from a variety of sources:

• Does your professor have old exams you can use?
• Do you have Supplemental Instruction, tutoring, or other campus help resources to get ideas from?
• Does your textbook have a supplemental website with practice questions? If not, can you use the questions at the end of each chapter?
• Do you have a study group you can form to help you create a practice exam?
• Can you make a practice exam from any questions you’ve created throughout your study sessions?

However you do it, try to match it to the type and number of questions you’ll see on exam day.

Steps for Executing a 5-Day Study Plan:

Day 1: Create study aids for your first chunk of material. This should take around 2 or so hours. It does not have to be done in one sitting.

Day 2: Create study aids for your second chunk of material. Again, this should take around 2 or so hours. Then practice using active retrieval or recall strategies for the items you created on Day 1. This should take around 30 minutes or so for a total of 2.5 hours for the day.

Day 3: Create study aids for your third chunk of material. Since this material is getting easier or it’s newer and more fresh in your mind, you might only need 90 minutes or so to be able to create study aids. It’s ok if you need a bit more time. Then use various active recall strategies for the items created on the first two days, like so:

• • • 30 minutes of active recall strategies with Day 2 study aids
    • 20 minutes of active recall strategies with Day 1 study aids

Day 4: Create the study aids for your final chunk of material. You may only need an hour or so to do this since this is potentially the easiest or most recent material you’ve covered in class. Then you’ll do active recall for all the items you created over the first 3 days, like so:

• • • 30 minutes of active recall strategies with Day 3 study aids
    • 20 minutes of active recall strategies with Day 2 study aids
    • 10 minutes of active recall strategies with Day 1 study aids

Day 5: At this point, you’ve created all your study aids. No new information is going into your brain. This is your chance to see what you really know. Do your active recall for all four days of study tools (30 minutes with Day 4 study aids, 20 minutes with Day 3 study aids, 10 minutes each with Day 2 and Day 1 study aids). Then it’s best to set a timer and take a practice exam without any notes to help you. Most folks don’t test themselves until the actual exam when it’s too late to make changes or get assistance.

Note: if you have more than four chunks of information, continue to follow the pattern of creating new study tools and doing recall strategies with each day’s study aids until you get to that final review the day before the exam. Your study plan can be as many extra days as you need it to be!

Example of a Generic 5-Day Study Plan

The following table features a generic 5-Day Study Plan with a break day built in. With this plan, assume the exam is on Monday. A couple of notes on the terminology and details included in the table:

• “Create” means to make study aids.
• “Recall” means to use active retrieval strategies to pull the information from your brain.
• The times listed here are approximate. If you need more or less time to create your study aids, that’s fine.
• Also, it’s okay to work in smaller chunks of time spread throughout the day. For example, if the table suggests planning to work for two hours on Day 1 study materials, you can break that work time into four 30-minute chunks rather than work for two hours straight.

Note: This table is based on resources created by the Academic Success Center, TAMU.

Example of a 5-Day Study Plan for an Introductory Psychology Course

Note: This table is based on resources created by the Academic Success Center, TAMU.

Considerations and Tips

Start by checking your syllabus. What are the Learning Objectives associated with the current information you will be tested on? Can you answer those questions fully?

If it’s the first exam of the semester, it can be helpful to brainstorm a multitude of questions at different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and ask for feedback from your instructor. Which questions more closely resemble the types and level of questions that the professor tends to ask? That can then help you determine which types of study aids you need to start creating. Your goal is to think like the professor.

The goal of your study plan is to take the guesswork out of what you need to do. An ideal study plan would be detailed enough that anyone with the appropriate class materials could follow it and earn a good grade.

Reminder: Using a passive rehearsal strategy like “reading over the chapter” is often ineffective. Think about what you want to be able to do at the end of your study session and write it into your plan. Being concrete with your strategies allows for peace of mind.

Case Studies

Case Study 1

Maria likes to do things at the last minute. “I work best under pressure!” she claims. She’s been cramming and pulling all-nighters recently and is surprised that her grades aren’t A’s and B’s. What should she change to bring her grades up?

Case Study 1 Answer

Maria should start to plan out her studying over more days. She can use the 5-day study plan template to create a more concrete plan for her exams going forward. She should try to study earlier in the day so she can get good sleep and her brain can process information to its full potential during the exam.

Case Study 2

Ash studies for their exams several days in advance by rewriting her notes for each chapter covered. They plan out which chapter notes to rewrite on which days so when they sit down to study they know what to do. Ash goes over the notes over and over the day before the exam. Their exam grades aren’t as high as they would like. What should Ash do to improve their grades?

Case Study 2 Answer

Ash should create another study aid other than rewritten notes, preferably one that requires a higher level of learning. When they use the notes they made, they should do more than “go over” them and incorporate active review. Ash should also incorporate the “create and recall” pattern of the 5DSP into their exam preparation time. They should make sure they are using the tools they made to challenge themselves in a variety of way.

Case Study 3

For Jordan, high school classes were always easy. She never needed to put much effort into studying. Now, Jordan is in her first year of college and just finished her first round of exams, which did not go as well as she had hoped.  Jordan tried what had worked for her in high school: flashcard repetition for two or three days until she memorized everything on them.  What suggestions would you have for Jordan to improve her exam preparation and, hopefully, her grades?

Case Study 3 Answer

First, Jordan might want to increase the amount of study days before an exam.  Two or three days of studying might work occasionally, but that amount of time is closer to cramming than extended studying.  Plus, her study plan is clearly not working as well as she would like it to, so studying fixe or six days out from the exam could be useful. Second, Jordan should consider other options for how she is creating and recalling her study materials. Changing her methods can help reinforce the retention process.

Actionable Items and Application

• Study more in advance. Cramming is for survival, not for sustained success.
• Make a 5DSP for your next exam. Take your plan to your instructor and ask for feedback.
• Gather a variety of materials that could be used for studying now, so they are ready when you need them.
• Identify available resources for the class (e.g. old exams, textbook questions, etc.).
• Tell a friend about the Five-Day Study Plan and explain it to them.