Designing More Effective Final Exam Review Sessions

It’s final exam season for many faculty members.

If you’re like me and work at an institution that requires final exams, you’ve likely received at least one hastily written email from a stressed student asking, “What do I need to know for the exam?”

I’m sorry. I probably triggered at least a few of you with that last sentence.

I’ve received this kind of email at every institution where I have served as a TA or instructor—and it’s always been puzzling.

“I want you to know the material covered in the course.”

This semester, I set a goal to design a review session that made it so clear what students needed to know and how to prepare that I didn’t receive this common email.

Well, my work friends, it’s the day before my final exam as I write this, and I haven’t heard a peep.

Could it be? Did I finally crack the code?

I (cautiously) believe so!

So, how did I get here?

On my last day of class, I posted about the review session I designed on my LinkedIn page (read that post here), and it sparked several reposts and private messages, so I thought I’d share my reflections on designing more effective final exam review sessions while it’s still fresh in my mind.

Photo by Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra on Unsplash

Over the years, I have taken many different approaches to leading final exam sessions: having students work in groups to attempt to answer potential essay questions, playing a fun game, having a Q&A session where students brought their questions to the review session, etc.

These experiences have taught me that the best review sessions help students identify their gaps in knowledge, require students to actively retrieve information, and provide a fun environment for students to practice recalling information they’ve acquired in your course.

In other words, combining the elements of the approaches above and creating a quick-paced session that keeps students’ attention while developing their study skills.

Identifying gaps in knowledge

From my experience, most students are not very good estimators of what they know and don’t know in a course. Especially if a course is related to a topic that feels more familiar or intuitive, I’ve noticed that students tend to overestimate their command of the material.

Thus, one of my first goals in a review session is to help students recognize gaps in their knowledge.

There are many ways to go about this but the easiest way I’ve found is giving a mock quiz that includes commonly misunderstood topics or misconceptions about course concepts.

When students go through the questions, they will realize they aren’t as certain as they originally envisioned. A small dose of intellectual humility often increases their investment in whatever task you ask them to do next.

Actively retrieving information

Once students are aware that they have gaps in their knowledge that need to be filled, the next step is to provide an opportunity that guides them through the steps of how to retrieve information.

This may be a basic point, but it’s important: many students struggle to organize information in courses effectively.

This struggle is rooted in many things—stress, overwhelm, procrastination, etc.

But on a more basic level, it’s about a lack of experience managing large amounts of data.

I once used data management as a metaphor to help a student I was advising create a plan to study for his exam.

Now, I didn’t realize at the time how much it would resonate, but it makes sense now (I teach at a STEM-focused institution so many of my students are very analytical).

That day, I explained to the student that classes were a practice in data management. In the classroom, data are ideas, names, dates, etc. I told him his goal as a student was to figure out the relevant data containers the instructor created to organize or “bin” all the information.

When the same student repeated this metaphor back to me months later and credited it for the improvement in his grade, I started repeating it to other students, and it seemed to click.

I’m not sure this exact metaphor will work for your students. My basic point is that our students need much more guidance on how to synthesize and organize information from our courses than we probably realize.

For this reason, during review sessions, I break down course concepts into manageable chunks and have students try to retrieve information about a single topic at a time. This approach is useful because it allows me to see where students are getting stuck—do they have class notes? Have they opened the reading? The answers to these questions allow you to suggest appropriate next steps.

Providing a fun environment for recalling information

Realizing you don’t know as much as you thought you did is frustrating, and working to retrieve the information to fill these gaps is hard work.

That’s why the final component of an effective review session must be fun. This approach sparks positive feelings and rewards students for their academic labor, literally and figuratively. I often give game winners extra credit, for example.

This is the easiest part of designing a review session for me. I am my family’s “game person.” I’m not kidding; over Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law walked into our house, and the first thing she asked was what game I had for us to play that evening.

I wear my game planner tiara proudly and lean into my talent when teaching.

I’ve designed review games that are adaptations of some of my favorite games at home: Scattergories, Taboo, Family Feud, Charades, Pictionary, and more.

While students will often want to start here, I’ve learned that ending with these games is the most effective because students have reviewed the materials beforehand and aren’t just guessing.

It may also feel more pleasant for the review session to be a fun game because the room is filled with laughter and fun. However, my experience has shown that this fun and laughter doesn’t increase students’ knowledge or effectively fill their learning gaps. That’s because they typically aren’t taking notes. Instead, they are more focused on the competition and/or trash talking (it’s not a good game if there’s no trash talking, afterall).

These are some lessons I’ve picked up about designing review sessions effectively. What has worked best in your classroom? Paid subscribers can share their knowledge and learn from others in the Notes From a Work Friend chat. If you’ve been waiting to upgrade, doing so today will offer an opportunity to be in community with other like-minded educators.

Until next time work friends,

Brielle aka Your Cooperative Colleague