4 Ways to Help Students Prepare for Exams in WebAssign

Not only is it stressful for students, but also for instructors. Encourage independent learning and help students improve performance on exams with a simple solution: practice.
Although practice may not always result in perfection, it can help students gain confidence and improve their understanding through repetition and time. These four tips are from Katie Culler, Faculty Partner and instructor.
1. Create Study Groups for Your Students
Students will be more motivated to study if they have a support group. Preparing your students for the exam is a good idea. Make sure they are assigned study groups so that they can study with a pre-selected group. WebAssign allows you to create your own groups or allow the system randomly assign groups. To give your students the chance to meet and share contact information, schedule an introductory group assignment. Make sure to let your students know which group they are in!
2. Show students how to use Class Insights to practice
My Class Insights can be customized to each student. It gives them guidance based on their performance on previous assignments and completed work. Show students how to access My Class Insights (on the top right corner) and how they can use it for practice. Students can review questions they haven’t answered correctly and practice different versions of the questions to improve skills.
3. When you are able, enable the Personal Study Plan
The Personal Study Plan (PSP), which is available for many textbooks in WebAssign, uses short, random practice and chapter quizzes as a way to assess students’ knowledge of particular concepts. It then provides customized suggestions for tutorial materials that address specific areas students are struggling with. To use the PSP:
First, verify that you have a PSP for your course title. These three steps will enable you to provide a PSP for your students if you do.
These Personal Study Plan strategies can be shared with your students.
Bonus: You can choose the topics that you want your students to focus on, and track individual student performance chapter by chapter.
4. Create a Cumulative Practice Exam
Because they involve students in the concepts covered by the exam, practice exams are often more effective that study guides. WebAssign allows you to create practice exams with textbook questions. This will allow students to better understand the concept through text, videos, and tutorials. Students can also use the “try another version” function to practice a different version or question. Keep track of student engagement in your gradebook. This data can be used to inform one-on-1 discussions with struggling students.

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