Tip 1: The 3 and 3 method
3 Positive and 3 negative points on each topic. Simplicity will make it easier for your brain to store information.
For example, take the topic CSR, advantages and disadvantages:
+ Differentiation or USP
+ Reputation
+ Attract ethical investors
-Cost
-Profit cost trade-off - impact on shareholder's dividends
-Do customers care about ethics or do they just want cheap goods?
But that's not all. For those that like a table why not make some of these on Word and print them out, one for each topic?
Play around with the fonts and then print your masterpiece in colour. By this time your brain has been busy taking in this new information. The time you have taken to make it look wonderful means that the brain now thinks it is super important and will keep it close to hand for your exam.
Tip 2 The POWER of sticky notes
It sounds obvious but a pile of sticky notes might be the secret to unlocking your mock revision. Especially if you have got "stuck". By that I mean when you cannot get down to it, you sit at your desk or table and just cannot seem to find where to start. Get some sticky notes and have two columns. Just put what you want to do in that session. Don't overwhelm yourself. If you know your attention span is about a double lesson, then just do an hour. You will be very pleased with how good it feels to move notes from one column to another.
Tip 3 Everything on one slide
A colleague the other day (in geography) showed me a slide show they had made. This was not for projecting onto a whiteboard but simply as a way to contain EVERYTHING about one topic on a slide. She said it was more flexible than Word as she could move the text boxes around to fit. If you prefer to use a computer to revise than make notes with pens and paper, then this may be just the answer for you.
This took me about 20 minutes to make. Now I can see at a glance what I need to revise for and what I already know and this topic. I can tick off what I already know and if I keep this to hand I can see what I need to do next. Like a roadmap for my revision.
