With exams coming up very shortly I have decided to take a different, hopefully more successful, approach to revision. In the past I have merely read my notes and completed practice/past papers, however at university this is very different. No longer being spoon fed the keywords and model answers means that, for the first time, education is placed in the students hands. The lectures are extremely useful and interesting, however without self study the fresh knowledge remains just that; until forgotten. I have learnt that merely attending the lectures is not enough for me; unlike at School and College where I found everything was constantly being reinforced until it became second nature.

My method so far has been to list the topics in each module and then review the lecture slides on each of those topics and try to compress the information to a more manageable, less daunting, amount. It has saved me from sifting through a large volume of slides to locate one piece of information. During the process of compressing the lecture notes I have tried to think of connections between the sub topics with some association or in some topics a real world example. I have found the SE1SA5 (Programming) project and my previous A' Level project to be very linked with Software engineering. Chiefly the System Life-cycle. I also feel that my approach to the SE1SA5 was more 'agile' than the A' Level project which again helps the link and association with Software Engineering.

One lecturer gave his own advice on revision techniques, which I have taken on board and will try out. Précis each lecture for each subject. Attempting to halve the volume each time. Until the amount written is roughly that which you expect to write in the exam. This would mean that you have every topic covered within the exam time.

A few other facts have really stuck in my mind too. The lecturer stated that during a study period of 1 hour 30 minutes the ability for the brain to retain information related to that subject drops to 10%. In order to revert to full capacity a 20 minute break should be taken after this. Or in case of a rush a different subject could be beneficial, though not as beneficial as a 20 minute break it would maximise revision during a small time frame.

The last piece of revision advice that he gave was the memorising of facts. In order to recall facts, such as numbers, in an exam it is best to begin memorising 3 days prior to the exam in order for a better recall and retention.

I intend to use all of this advice as previous revision advice has been very vague and with little justification, which I found frustrating and much advice just did not work for me. So far I have noticed a promising improvement on the précis stage alone and intend to keep this up. However, next year I intend to do a lot more weekly study in my own time than I have this year. To truly retain the information rather then learn it in time for an exam.