What are closed book exams?
Closed book exams are a traditional type of exam. These exams require you to know the area and answer questions without notes or resources.
Advice for closed book exams
In these exams your focus should be on learning and understanding content so that you can recall it unaided in the exam and adapt/apply it to the question. A key thing to remember in a closed book exam is that knowledge alone won’t score you high marks. You are judged on applying the information you know to the answer and in hitting the marking criteria. Therefore you should spend some time to learn and understand the marking criteria and target your answers to hit it.
When revising for an exam, learn more than just the content given to you. Research relevant criticisms of areas that may come up in the exam. Do wider reading so that you understand the area and have the ability to analyse the area. Learn underpinning theories that can be used to support or criticise an argument. Theories/principles are useful as they often apply to across your module and course.
Using key cards and teaching others is a good way of gaining an understanding of an area. Key cards can be used to test yourself and help in learning content when by yourself.
Focus your revision on all the questions you have to answer. Don’t rely on luck of a certain question coming up. Sometimes you may have the option to choose which questions you answer in the exam. In these cases use maths to work out how many topics you would need to revise. Balance your time across these areas based upon the amount of marks they are potentially worth.
For more general revision strategies check out the exam revision page.