How to Study for Exams Part II
- AUSNA Officer
- May 26, 2020
- 4 min read
In this post, I'll be going over one method to organize all the content you're expected to learn and also how to know what content is important for concept exams.
Step One: Starting a Study Guide Before Class
If you're motivated to start studying for an exam or you're actually taking the time to prep for class (like for all those pop quizzes in term two: hint, hint), you should be creating resources for the test at the same time. Start making your exam study guide immediately.
Copy your student learning objectives and/or exemplars onto a word document or notebook.
Pull up your Lippincott reading list and try to generally find answers to the student learning objectives or exemplars. If it's too broad to answer, try to use exemplars to drill it down.
If you have a PowerPoint already, pull that up and see if that information fits into any of your student learning objectives or exemplars. Make sure you have the information from the PowerPoint included in your study guide.
Fill in any information that you hear in that fits into your study guide; add any categories that are missing.
Always look for patterns; make sure you're paying special attention to topics that are covered multiple times!
Step Two: Starting/Adding to a Study Guide After Class
If you're like me, you probably don't always take the time to prepare before class. In this case, you still need to put together a study guide to review content. You shouldn't be just studying straight out of the books; you need to synthesize (big buzz word in study research) the information in order to learn it!
If you've already started the study guide, use your notes and in class activities to add to it! I recommend pulling this study guide up DURING class to work on.
If you haven't started the study guide yet, copy your student learning objectives or exemplars onto a word document or notebook.
Pull up your PowerPoint slides and any notes you took in class and try to answer those questions/describe the concepts.
Step Three: Finishing Your Study Guide
This is where my study method is a little controversial.
Instructors would say that if you haven't done your readings, you need to knock those out; I have had a different experience (with the exception of ADN 210 - I would recommend doing readings in that class). Instead of using the Lippincott text as the primary resource, I use the ATI books and an NCLEX comprehensive review book. I only use Lippincott if I feel like I don't understand a concept.
The ATI books, in particular, are important because the tests come from ATI; while instructors will tell you that they can adjust questions, I have never seen content on a test that was not covered in the ATI books. In the past, I have wasted a lot of time studying information that was in Lippincott and not ATI, and it never appears on the test (again, with the exception of ADN 210 - the information for those tests is found in ATI modules on atitesting.com rather than just the ATI books and the Lippincott texts are helpful in this case).
That being said, it's time to finish up your study guide.
Pull up your reading list, student learning objectives and exemplars.
Look through the table of contents of your ATI books and try to find the items that are in your readings or talking about in class in the ATI books. Mark down those chapters.
- You may also need to go to atitesting.com and use the search function for the
electronic books to find topics.
-You also have the option of downloading your ATI books to a searchable PDF and
you can Ctrl+F (PC) or Command+F (Mac) through them that way as well to make
sure you're not missing anything.
Go through all of those ATI chapters and include that information in the study guide that you started. If you don't understand a word or concept you're taking notes on, use your Lippincott books to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
Use an NCLEX study book, such as Saunders, to make sure that you have all of the important content.
Keep in mind that you must know the ATI and NCLEX study book material 100%! This is the most important and basic information you need to know to pass.
Anything that you are stuck on or wanting more information on, use your supplemental resources or YouTube channels (good examples are RegisteredNurseRN, Cathy Parkes, HeluvaRN, Khan Academy).
These study guides can get long. I have done both handwritten and word docs; obviously, the handwritten study guide tends to be shorter. In term four, for the test I got 100% on, my study guide was about 20 pages long.
The important thing is, for retention, you need to put the information (as much as you can) into your own words/format - which is what I meant by synthesize the information - and include pictures, graphics, tables, concept maps, whatever makes sense to you.
The #1 goal for this study guide is to consolidate all of your resources including Lippincott readings, ATI, NCLEX review books, class notes, and handouts into one so that you can use it to test yourself on content (more on that in the next post).
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