In the following list, you will find advices to successfully review for academic subjects

Learning and teaching process is composed by different elements, such as knowledge acquiring, application, evaluation, among others. When talking about evaluation, this concept refers to the tool to measure students’ performance and knowledge acquisition. Through evaluation, in academic and educative contexts, it is possible to determine the fulfilment of competences and objectives.    

According to the Colombian Education Minister, “evaluation is essential to educative quality, because it consolidates different types of information that allow to take better informed decisions and understand learning-teaching process that is not clear without its application”. Furthermore, this organism argues that “the pedagogical use of the evaluations’ results orientate the work of institutions, teachers, students, and parents”. Thus, evaluation is a tool to strengthen the learning-teaching process and all its participants.

Then, studying for a test or evaluation becomes a matter of importance. For this reason, we did an informal poll to students from different scholar levels to ask them what the best tips to study are. In the following list, you will find their answers and what students usually do to review for a test.

1. To highlight important information: Remembering and memorizing all of the information can be difficult considering the amount of concepts and ideas that there are in each reading. Thus, the advice is to highlight important information and doing it with different colors. For instance, main ideas can go in blue highlighter pen and examples and data can go in green. Once you start reviewing, it will be easier to identify and remember main ideas and concepts. Julian Barrera, professional architect, pin points that highlighting information allows to emphasize and differentiate important information.
2. Making summaries: In class, students usually take notes about what teachers explain during sessions. Nevertheless, not all of that information is relevant when studying or reviewing for a test.  Therefore, making summaries will help you to gather clear and concrete information required for the test. Summaries can be done in online programs or handmade, it depends on what works better for you. Maria Paula Cardoso, Law student, claims this is the best way to study and understand because when you are constructing the summary you have to organize, curate, and select what you are going to include. Also, in accordance to Cardoso, it is useful because when you are tipping or writing the information you start to identify what material relates to what concept.
3. Taking notes: For a regular student, who is taking different classes, is not possible to remember everything said in distinct classes. Therefore, to take notes will help you to review. If you decide to make a summary, it will allow you to classify and identify important information.  Felipe Romero, Design student, explains that this technique is what better works for him because concepts and ideas are explained in his own words.
4. Using online platforms: On the internet, there are different tools that help you study. For example, there is Quizlet. This is an online version of index cards that will help you acquire and review concepts and ideas. You can create index cards sets or you can use the other sets that different users have created. Natalia Victoria, psychologist and languages student, explains that this online tool works best for her when reviewing for language tests.  
5. To plan the review process: It is important to say that reviewing is not a process you should left for the last minute. If you want to fully understand and obtain excellent results, you should start to study a week before the test. Students who answer the poll agree that studying a day before the test is not beneficial because their brains do not retain all the information and stress can affect the performance over the evaluation.

Bonus: According to the “state depended memory” theory, memory is conditioned to mental state when that memory was created. Therefore, chewing gum when reviewing and chewing the same flavor gum during the test will help you to remember what you previously studied.  

Latin American Post | Marcela Peñaloza