Marybeth Norcross

Test-taking 101

When it comes to testing well there is no substitute for planning and preparation. There are, however, some practical strategies, sort of like a test-taking 101 course, you can use to help your performance better reflect your understanding of the material.

Test-taking strategies address your attitude and how you read and answer test questions. and can be used across disciplines. Using good strategies improves your testing skills, often resulting in higher scores and increased confidence. Common strategies include

Carefully reading the directions
Knowing the types and number of questions
Answering the easy questions first
Managing your time carefully

Test-taking also includes how to approach more complex and difficult questions. These questions often present a detailed scenario, and then ask you to supply a specific piece of information or part of a process. Strategies to improve your performance on these types of questions include:

Working the Question
Reading all the Answers
Eliminating Options
Applying the Most/Best Rule
Changing Your Answers

Working the Question

The first step is to zero in on what the question is asking. In complex questions it can be difficult to figure out exactly what the questioner wants. Some of the details in the question can be distracting, so you need to work the question carefully in order to know how to answer it. Try to come up with a likely answer in your head. If your answer differs from the response options, you probably didn’t analyze the question correctly.

Reading all the Responses

One of the biggest mistakes people make when taking a test is to select the first “correct” answer and move on to the next question. Most questions will have more than one response that sounds correct, so it is important to carefully read them all and then choose the best answer.

Eliminating Options

It’s easier to get to the correct answer if you eliminate the obviously wrong answers. Sometimes the options will contain distractors. These might be answers that have subtle errors in them, or have absolutes like always and never. Distractors tend to sound good, but aren’t quite right.

Applying the “Most/Best Rule”

Once you have narrowed your options, it’s time to choose the best answer. One strategy is to apply the Most/Best Rule. Generally, the answer that applies to most of the people, most of the time is the best answer. Unless the question is asking for an outlier, it is unlikely that best answer will be a 1/200 occurrence.

Changing Your Answers

How often have you gone back on a test and changed your answer from a correct response to one that is incorrect? This often happens because you become unsure and second-guess yourself. It is so frustrating, especially when you had the correct answer all along. How can you fix this? Don’t change you answer unless you can explain exactly why your first response was wrong and your second choice is correct. If you don’t have a really good reason to change an answer, don’t do it.

Planning and preparation are still key to testing well, but using good testing strategies can increase your confidence and help you bump up your scores. You can find more resources to help you improve your test-taking skills and a tutorial on our Learning Support page.

Being Thankful

It hard to believe that it’s already Thanksgiving! A time for reflection, a time to be thankful for everything in our lives. The semester has gone by so quickly. It seems like I’ve had my head down, buried in my work, and when I finally look up, it’s time for the Thanksgiving holiday! A friend once commented that the days drag, but the weeks fly by. Maybe that’s why Thanksgiving has taken me by surprise this year.

Gratitude

It’s hard to be thankful, but gratitude is the heart of our ability to appreciate what we have. Most of us don’t take the time for thanks. We are often too busy, buried in information, exams, friends, family, work, and all the other immediacies that compete for our attention. We complain about never having enough time, enough money, enough opportunity, and if only we could get whatever, we would make it, be successful, be happy. What we forget is that all our working and reaching keeps our eyes on what we want and we never celebrate what we have.

Thankful for What We Have

We can’t be successful in life if we only focus on keeping up, catching up, holding on, and getting more. We have to stop from time to time to think, reflect, and take stock. Reflecting on our lives, our achievements and our setbacks, helps us change and grow. I would argue that it is equally important to experience gratitude, and be thankful for for what we have, the people, opportunities, encounters, and adventures we have experienced. Thankfulness increases appreciation, which increases satisfaction and contentment.

Whether you are celebrating a Thanksgiving with your family or enjoying a friendsgiving with your comrades, take the time to stop, reflect, and experience gratitude. Focus on what you have rather than what you don’t. Be thankful for what you have accomplished, for having direction in your life, and for all the people who support you. If you can, share your appreciation with others, but most of all, enjoy your holiday. Rest and refresh yourself and return ready for the end of the semester.

The Student Success Center will close at 6:00 pm on Wednesday November 22nd for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will reopen at 7:30 am on Monday, November 27th.

The Study Schedule: Your Plan to Defeat Procrastination

We have arrived at that point in the semester when students are looking stressed, and are scrambling to catch up with their workload. Many find themselves losing the battle with procrastination, and end up cramming right before an important exam. Their performance is off, and they can’t catch their breath.

Create a Study Schedule

Creating and sticking to a study schedule is easy to do and will help you win your battle against procrastination. Your schedule will help you stay on top of your work, rather than having to drop everything to study for an exam. It will help reduce your stress and improve your long-term retention of information.

Creating a study schedule is easier when you can actually see time. Use this Weekly Schedule to create your schedule, starting with what I call the non-negotiables. These are things you can’t control: your class/lab/clinic and work schedules. Your non-negotiables tend to stay fairly constant from week to week, making them easy to schedule around.

Second, add the things you can control. Start with your sleep. What time do you want to go to bed? Bed time is an individual decision, but what is most important is that you get enough sleep. Try to make sure you are getting between 6 – 8 hours per night. You can’t learn if you are exhausted, so scheduling your sleep is very important. Next, schedule family time. Again, this is different for every individual, but it is important that both you and your family know when it’s family time. They can better understand your need for study time if they know they have time with you. Another important thing to schedule is time for physical activity. It doesn’t really matter what you do – take a walk, go to a yoga class, play basketball with friends – just make sure you are doing something. Your memory and your stress level will thank you.

Finally, schedule blocks of time to study. The number of hours needed will vary by College and by program, but all will require concentrated study time. Try to schedule study blocks every day. You may want to take a day off – like Friday, when you are exhausted at the end of the week – but otherwise, plan to study every day. This will spread your studying out over time, and give you the opportunity to process new information within 24 hours of its presentation. You will be able to stay on top of the work and still have time for reviewing and connecting the new information with what you learned previously. Planned daily study time is the best weapon you have to fight procrastination.

Make the Most of your Study Schedule

You can get more out of your study schedule if you plan what you will study during those hours. First, work on the new material from the day. Take your notes and turn the new information into a series of practice questions you can use to review. Work through the practice questions then add them to your other materials for review. Second, make time daily to review the practice questions, charts, diagrams, and other materials you’ve created, so you are constantly reviewing and re-testing yourself. Be sure you use the study time you’ve blocked. Don’t skip a study session! That opens the door and ushers procrastination right into the room!

Creating and sticking to a study schedule is the first step in defeating procrastination and improving your academic performance. If you want some help creating your own study schedule or need tips on how to study more effectively, the Learning Specialists in the Student Success Center would be happy to work with you. Just complete and submit the Academic Coaching Request form, and we will contact you to set up a meeting.

Building Your Learning Community

Are there people you’re connecting with during your time here at UAMS? Who makes up your pack, your crowd, your network, your peeps? Are you including the people you collaborate, study, and work with as part of your coursework? What about the instructors and practitioners who serve as mentors and advisers? Don’t forget the students and faculty from your IPE groups. These are some of the people you have in your learning community.

What is a Learning Community

A learning community is a group of people who share common academic goals and meet together to collaborate on coursework and increase their learning. They can be formal structured communities like the academic houses in the Colleges of Medicine and Nursing. They can also be informal groups of the people you go to for exam reviews, group projects, and collaborative research papers.

Benefits of a Learning Community

There are a number of good reasons for building/participating in a learning community.

Study Partners. Being part of a community means you always have a stable group of people working together to make the learning more effective. The students share resources that that can make learning easier. Therefore, they feel more prepared for exams by quizzing one another and explaining difficult information.

Out-of-Class Experiences. Whether it’s service learning, volunteer opportunities, or interprofessional projects, connecting with others in a community will make learning more meaningful, authentic, and interprofessional.

Connections to Instructors and Mentors. Building relationships through service learning and volunteer opportunities with instructors and practitioners will help you know where you will want to go in your profession after you have graduated.

Lasting Friendships and Professional Relationships. The people you connect with today will be the people you will work with as you build your professional career, and move your profession forward in providing the best possible health care experience.

Chances are you have already gathered people both from inside and outside your program into a learning community. They are the people you go to regularly for study sessions and labor with on group projects. Enjoy these relationships. They make your learning better and increase your satisfaction with your time here at UAMS.

Reward and Challenge at UAMS

Welcome to UAMS, and specifically to the students of the College of Health Professions! The start of a new academic year is filled with optimism, possibilities, and challenges. While you are here, the faculty and staff will work to prepare you for success in the profession you have chosen to pursue. They will teach you the information you need to know. They will demonstrate the skills you will be asked to perform. They will challenge you to think critically and apply your skills in a clinical setting, and they will ask you to see yourself as an important and responsible member of a professional community. The process will be exciting, rewarding, and very challenging.

A Different Challenge: It all Counts Now

Your coursework at UAMS will be different from what you have done before you arrived. Here, all your classes are important – they all count. There’s no Ancient Civilization or American Literature course that you can take and then forget. At UAMS, the classes build on one another. Every class you take will be vital for success in the next class. There is no forgettable, or throw-away information. You will need what you learned for one test to be successful on the next test. Everything you learn will be needed for your board and certification exams. You begin preparing for your profession on the first day of class.

A New Challenge: Your Habits Will Change

Because everything counts now, many of the time management and study habits you used for earlier courses may not be enough for you to be successful. Often students study exam to exam. This means that they wait until an upcoming exam and then drop everything to study. In your new courses, these is so much information to learn, and you will often have multiple tests within a single week, so it is important to carefully manage your study time to stay on top of your workload.

You may also have to change the way you study. Many students study by rereading and highlighting their notes. But your tests aren’t assessing how well you stuff information into your head. Your tests are designed to check how efficiently and effectively you can pull information out of your brain. So you will need to learn ways to practice for your exams by creating your own test questions and answering them. If you would like more information or help, the Learning Specialists at the Student Success Center can help you sharpen your time management and study skills.

A Rewarding Challenge: You will be a Health Professional

When you graduate from UAMS you will be ready to take your place as a member of the community of health care professionals. You will leave with the knowledge, skills, and experience you need for a successful future, making your time here a rewarding challenge. Make the most of the opportunities you are offered to become better in your chosen profession. Enjoy your time with your classmates and learn from one another. Often, they can continue to be a source of support and encouragement throughout your career. This great adventure will challenge and change you in ways you can’t yet imagine, but it will also bring many rewards, both during your time at UAMS and in the future.

Remember, the Student Success Center is ready to help you through many of the challenges you face in working toward a successful academic and professional career. You can learn more about our services on our website at http://studentsuccess.uams.edu.

Hot Summer Days

There are many summer activities to enjoy on the beautiful rivers, lakes, trails, and mountains here in Arkansas. However, with temperatures climbing up to triple digits, it’s wise to be sun-safe, and take a few precautions.

Heat-related illnesses can affect anyone, so it’s best to follow these tips to avoid dehydration, heat-stroke, and other heat-related illnesses.

Drink plenty of water or other non-alcoholic beverages. You want to try to get more fluid in than you are losing.
Wear lightweight, loose-fitting clothing that is light in color;
Reduce strenuous activities or do them during the cooler parts of the day, like before 10:00 am or after 4:00 pm.

Being sun-safe also means avoiding sunburn and limiting your exposure and protecting your skin. The sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays can cause damage to the skin, eyes and immune system, and can also cause cancer.

Stay in the shade, especially during midday hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.), when UV rays are strongest and do the most damage.
Cover up with clothing to protect exposed skin. Wear a hat with a wide brim to shade the face, head, ears, and neck.
Wear sunglasses that provide UV protection.
Use sunscreen with sun protective factor (SPF) 15 or higher, and reapply it every two hours after being in the water or exercising and sweating.

UAMS has resources to help you beat the heat as you enjoy summer fun. Learn more about staying safe in the sun in Don’t Sizzle this Summer from Living Healthy. You will find more information about heat related illnesses from Here’s to Your Health. Stay sun-safe and enjoy yourself this summer.

Resilience After Failing

At the end of the first day of the Battle of Shiloh Tennessee in 1862, the forces under General Ulysses Grant were demoralized and defeated. Late that night Grant’s second-in-command, William T. Sherman found Grant under a tree in the pouring rain. ‘Well, Grant,’ said Sherman, ‘we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?’ ‘Yes,’ Grant replied, ‘lick ’em tomorrow, though.’ http://www.historynet.com/account-of-battle-of-shiloh.htm

The next day, they did. Reinforcements arrived, and Grant’s army succeeded in pushing back the Confederates to win the battle. General Grant’s resilience made it possible for him to push for victory after a calamitous setback and failure.

What is Resilience?

Resilience is the inner quality that enables you to pick yourself up after a failure or setback and move forward toward a success. Instead of giving up, a resilient person takes time to reflect and honestly analyze the why behind the failure or setback. He or she corrects their errors, formulates a new plan, and moves forward toward the goal.

Resilience helps students come back after failing a test. While performing poorly on an exam can be upsetting, remember, you will usually have many opportunities to “show what you know”. What is most important is that you move forward, and perform better the next time.

What Does a Resilient Student Do After Failing?

So what should you actually do after failing a test? The actual process is quite straightforward, although every student will execute it differently. Very simply, you should reflect, analyze, make changes, and execute.

Reflect. Begin with reflecting back over your preparation, and your expectations before you took the test. How well did you manage your time? What study strategies did you use to prepare? Did you learn as much as you could about the test? What were your expectations going into the test? Did your expectations match reality?

Analyze. It’s not enough to find the right answers to the test questions you missed. Instead, do a careful review of your exam and analyze each item to determine why you missed it. Did you not know the information? Did you misread the question, rush through it, or forget to come back to it? Did you panic and shut down? Were you sick or hungry? All of these are reasons for poor performance, and it’s important to know why you missed a question so you know what to change for the next test.

Make changes. Once you know why you missed an item you can make changes in the way you prepared (studied) or in how you took the test. For example, if you didn’t know the information, you can make sure that it’s in your notes and you tested yourself on it before the exam. If you misread the question, you can read it more deliberately, and read each response before you select one. Figure out what you need to do, and then plan how you will do it.

Execute. Now, follow through and do the things you need to do to be more successful. Your planned changes are worthless if you don’t actually put them into practice.

Developing your resilience will serve you well during your academic and professional careers. If you want help coming back from failing a test, complete the Academic Coaching Request to schedule an appointment with a Learning Specialist in the Student Success Center. We will be happy to help you make positive changes in your study and test-taking habits and become more academically successful.

What About Summer?

When I was a child I loved summer. Nearly three whole months out of school to swim and play with my friends. No homework and no chores. All I did was swim and play in the neighborhood. With a nod to Jim Gaffigan, who couldn’t use three months off after the rigors of 4th grade?

What are you going to do with your summer? While it might be tempting to sit on a sofa binge-watching shows on Amazon Prime or Netflix, this is a good time to gain experience and increase your education.

Using Your Summer Break

Assuming you have a break, there are a number of ways to stay connected to what you have learned. You could find an internship in your field or find places to volunteer to help keep your new knowledge and skills sharp. You could combine travel with service work to expand your worldview while learning about new places and people. See if you can attend a conference hosted by a your professional organizations. Students can connect with professionals, seek a mentor, and learn about potential employment opportunities. Conferences bring in people from all over, which can help you learn about new ideas and innovations and develop a broader perspective on your profession as a whole. These types of activities will help you remember the information and skills you learned over the academic year, rather than risk forgetting what you know and having to catch up in the fall.

What if you are in a program that runs through the summer? Summer semesters can be intense, because they tend to be shorter than those in the fall and spring. Make a renewed effort to connect new information to what you have already learned to build a bigger picture. Often, summer courses provide more interaction time with your instructors, who can provide opportunities to sharpen your skills or fill gaps in your knowledge.

Whatever you decide to do, don’t waste the opportunity to further your education in some way this summer. You will be a stronger student and a better practitioner if you do.

Tips for Testing Well

When it comes to testing well there is no substitute for planning and preparation. There are, however, some practical approaches, or test-taking strategies, you can use to ensure that your performance accurately reflects your preparation.

Test-taking strategies improve how you take a test. They include your attitude and how you read and answer test questions, and can be used across disciplines. Using good test-taking strategies improves your testing skills, often resulting in higher scores and increased confidence. Common strategies include

Carefully reading the directions
Knowing the types and number of questions
Answering the easy questions first
Managing your time carefully

Testing well will also require that you know how to approach more complex and difficult questions. These questions often present a detailed scenario, and then ask you to supply a specific piece of information or part of a process. Use the following steps to improve your performance on these types of questions.

Work the Question

Read all the Answers

Eliminate Options

It’s easier to get to the correct answer if you eliminate the obviously wrong answers. Sometimes the options will contain distractors. These might be answers that have subtle errors in them, or have absolutes like always and never. Distractors tend to sound good, but aren’t quite right.

Apply the “Most/Best Rule”

Once you have narrowed your options, it’s time to choose the best answer. One strategy is to apply the Most/Best rule. Generally, the answer that applies to most of the people, most of the time is the best answer. Unless the question is asking for an outlier, it is unlikely that best answer will be a 1/200 occurrence.

Planning for Finals

It’s hard to believe, but finals are just a few short weeks away, which means you are probably buried in papers, projects, presentations, and unit tests. Don’t let this sneak up on you! Planning for your finals doesn’t have to be difficult. With just a few steps you can go into finals focused, prepared, and ready for the challenge. Make a plan now so you are primed when the time arrives.

Focused on Finals

Being focused means that you know what you plan to accomplish. One good way to approach this is to make two sets of goals: what you need to accomplish, and what you want to accomplish.

Need to Accomplish. Think of these goals as your minimums. Look at your class performance over the semester. What scores do you need to make to achieve satisfactory performance in each of your classes? Distinguish the classes that will require more effort from those where you already have high scores.

Want to Accomplish. These goals are what will please you. In answering this, make sure you keep these goals realistic. Don’t set impossible goals for all your finals. Set these goals class by class to help keep them achievable.

Balance the two sets of goals and determine a goal for each class. This will help you focus your time management and study strategies to achieve your goals.

Prepared for Finals

Preparing involves more than just going over notes. It’s strategic. It starts right away with time management. Clear your calendar as much as possible and set a study schedule. Then find out whether your tests are comprehensive. If they are comprehensive, then you will want to begin reviewing past material right away. What do you know and what do you need to study? You can’t prepare for a comprehensive final by reading a semester’s worth of notes two days before the final.

Find a way to create notes that allow you to test yourself, especially in content where you are weaker. The more you practice retrieving information, the better your test performance will be, whether you are trying to remember information or applying your knowledge. Self-testing will reassure you that you know what you think you know.

Ready for Finals

Being ready means you have set goals for, and learned as much as you can about, each test. You’ve stuck to a study schedule, and carried out a study plan. It doesn’t mean you won’t be anxious. Ready means that you have done what you need to do, to the best of your ability, for the goals you set.

Take control and plan for your finals now. Don’t wait until the last minute. Getting started now will help reduce your anxiety and make you better prepared when the time arrives.