What are open book exams?
Open book exams are different to a standard exam as you are allowed to bring resources into the exam with you. The amount of resources you can take into an open book exams can vary so check what you can take in with you and adapt your revision accordingly.
Do I need to revise for open book exams?
Sometimes people associate open book exams with needing less revision. Although you do have your resources on you, you do still need to know and understand the area. The time you spend looking up answers in your work is time lost that you could be writing your answers. Therefore you should spend time revising and learning content.
Advice for open book exams
Open book exams do mean that you don’t need to know specific hard to remember information, such as direct quotes and dates, although if you do intend to look up information, ensure you know where it is. Tabbing and highlighting can help you save time in locating the content.
Knowledge isn’t given as much credit in an open book exam so you will need additional depth. Go further than the information given to you and do wider research. You can use this wider research to criticise or to support an argument.
Practice mock questions to time using only the notes that you are allowed to bring in to the exam. This can be really useful in practicing how quickly and effective you are in locating information and in answering the question. Learning the key words that could appear in real questions is important. If you adapt the key words in the question (such as evaluate, discuss and critically analyse), you can rewrite the answer to each question to see how they would change.
For more revision strategies and ways to revise check out the exam revision skills guide.