By Moya Ellis - 4 minute readLet's be real, pretty much every time we try to study with friends, it ends in getting no work done and then cramming the night before the test. However, it doesn't have to be that way! Keep reading to learn some of the best ways to stay productive when studying with friends.
You've probably heard this a million times but sometimes your best friends aren't the ones that you should study with. Make sure the friends you choose are ones that you work well with and won't get distracted by. Also it really helps to choose friends who achieve similar grades to you so that you are on the same wavelength as each other. Lastly, before meeting up, ensure you and your friends have the intention to study so you don't go off track and socialise.
Before your group study session, plan out with your friends what you want to go over and how you plan to do it. When you turn up with no plan and just a pile of notes that were handed out to you in class, often it ends in disaster where you're all overwhelmed and procrastinate. Going in with a clear idea of what you would like to learn/revise and how you're going to do it will allow you to stay on track.
Download our study planner here to help you write out a plan & stick to it.
When deciding where to meet up, make sure it's somewhere that will actually make you want to study. If you choose to study somewhere with lots of distractions, you're setting yourself up to fail. Some great places to study are:
A library (with booths or private study rooms that you can talk in)
Someone's house (if it's quiet/has space)
A quiet park
A great and simple study technique to use with friends is creating PowerPoint presentations for each other.
Here's how:
Divide up the area of study/dot points between all your friends.
Each person will spend some time researching their topic (check out Studyclix videos and notes to make this process easier) and collate their findings into a PowerPoint.
Acting like a teacher, each member will present their PowerPoint to the group to ensure everyone understands each of the topics.
By creating PowerPoint presentations, you cut down on the time needed to learn the material, as you only actually need to research one section of the area of study (and then learn the rest through your friends). Also through being able to teach the concepts and key topics to your friends effectively, it consolidates your own knowledge. Lastly, another advantage to this technique is that you will come out of the study session with a nice set of notes that you can refer back to throughout the year.
About a week before an upcoming test, a great way to study is by creating a practice SAC/internal assessment/exam using our exam builder.
Go onto the Studyclix exam builder and create your exam
Print out enough copies for you and your friends
Set a time limit and complete the practice test on your own under exam conditions
When finished, swap exams with your friends and mark each other's work according to the marking guide
Help each other understand where they went wrong and how they can improve
Often when we attempt practice tests, we mark ourselves more leniently or tell ourselves "...that's what I meant to say so I'll mark it as correct". However, by getting a friend to mark your work, it'll improve the accuracy of the marking and therefore help you prepare better for your test. Also by reading your friends' responses to different questions, you may get ideas about ways you can improve your answers to similar questions.
If you're studying for a content-heavy subject with lots of different terminologies, flashcards are your best friend. Set out some time to create some flashcards together where as a group, you would all go through your notes and create a definition for each term. Then test each other on each term. This is a great way to determine what key concepts you know really well and which ones you need to improve on.
