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Monday March 27th, 2023
As we approach the Easter break – prime time for revision – we’ll be looking at effective revision habits and techniques. Follow these to get the best from your revision in readiness for summer exams, as well as becoming more self-confident, self-aware and self-motivated! And as Google launches its Bard chatbot – in direct competition with ChatGPT’s latest version released earlier this month – we look at how artificial intelligence is impacting education.
Experts agree, getting into good studying and revising habits at a young age can set children up for effective revision for life. From creating quiet spaces to setting achievable goals and applying active (over passive) learning techniques – you can support your children whatever their age, ability or aspirations.
You could help your child to choose where they want to work. This might be a desk in their bedroom, or they might prefer to feel part of the household with a space cleared on the kitchen table. Everyone has different preferences for effective study. Some people like listening to music in the background while they work. Others prefer complete silence. Some prefer to be within the bustle of the household but without direct distraction; the background noises and daily routines can provide comfort and help them focus. Others crave a quiet space with zero noise, interruption or distraction. You and your child will have a pretty good idea of what works for them, but some younger children will need your help to identify their best learning space and style.
We aren’t all fans of routine, but it can be the key to effective revision. It could be as simple as setting up ‘protected time’ (so there’s no excuse not to study!) or it might be a more detailed timetable. The recommended timescales are 25 minutes revising, then a 5-minute break, then back to revision. But again, support your child to be flexible on this. And help them build in snack breaks and bring them drinks and healthy snacks if you can. Some children will need more encouragement to start revising; others will need help to strike a healthy balance between revision and breaks (i.e. they risk revising too much without breaks and becoming tired, stressed and ineffective).
Encourage your child to be self-aware about what they need to focus on. It can be tempting to opt for the areas or subjects they find easiest, because they’ll often enjoy these the most. But it’s the topics they find most challenging they’ll need to devote the most revision time to. It can help to go through textbooks or study guides together; you can ask them questions to help them identify their strengths and weaknesses. The next step is to plan how they can make sure they return more regularly to those identified ‘problem’ areas. Discuss with them whether they feel confident to meet those challenges on their own. Would it help to set up group study sessions, over Skype / Zoom, etc. or in-person? Or would they benefit from tutoring for certain subjects or even parts of certain subjects? Talk to us about tutoring if you think it might help.
But how best to tackle the actual task of revising what you’ve learnt? Again, this depends on your learning style and preference, but the most popular and effective approaches are all based on breaking down learning into smaller chunks. The technique you use often depends on how you prefer to see information presented.
Some people like the organic look and feel of a mindmap, where the main topic features in a bubble in the centre of your page. Then lines radiate from this ‘hub’ to smaller sub-topic facts and information about this topic (some people call the sub-topic bubbles ‘nodes’). You can show linked ideas by joining nodes with more lines.
If a mindmap feels too messy for you, try the placemat approach. This can feel and look more logical, comprising key points, key words (the ‘buzz’ words you know you’ll need to mention to gain top marks), and the sorts of questions that are likely to come up.
Some people like to record key facts and quotes on flashcards or index cards. As they’re usually A6 in size, they force you to summarise and create brief, concise notes that act as prompts. Being able to summarise your topic in a few words is a good way to make sure you’ve processed the information, and it builds your understanding and memory of the topic. You can carry a few flashcards with you and recap when you’re on the bus or test each other at your mate’s house.
Whatever your chosen method of revision (and it might be a mix of several different approaches as you work your way through the syllabus) – always be clear about your aims. On any given day, what is the aim of your revision and how will you tell if you’ve achieved it? This links to the technique of active revision; rather than just reading through your notes, or even re-writing them as in the approaches outlined above, why not set yourself tests based on those notes? Regular ‘tests’ help to normalise exams and take away some of the exam stress. Past papers are good for this technique, but it can be best to build up to these. Start small and allow yourself opportunities to check answers or ideas you’re not 100% sure of. Then gradually you can build in exam conditions, timed answers, etc. Parents, you can help set questions by looking through workbooks, study guides, etc. Students, check your answers straight away because instant feedback (i.e. while the idea is fresh in our mind) is proven to help embed knowledge.
If you can achieve all this – then you’ll approach exam season feeling relatively confident and calm. And you’ll be a more self-aware, self-motivated and self-confident student as a result.
About a fortnight after OpenAI released version 4 of its chatbot ChatGPT, Google will roll out its response Bard in the UK and US. People should be able to sign up for access via a waiting list before the end of this month. Billed as conversational AI, these chatbots enable users to type queries and requests as per a typical internet search. But they can also respond (with variable accuracy) to detailed questions, provide creative responses to difficult prompts, engage in a to-and-fro conversation with the user, and more.
These developments have triggered in-depth discussion in the education sector for obvious reasons. Experts are divided in their beliefs: some fear students will eschew rigorous research in favour of a ‘chat’ with a chatbot, which can trawl the web fast and piece together various elements it finds with increasingly impressive eloquence (and accuracy). Schools and universities already have systems in place to identify and prevent plagiarism, but chatbots’ efforts are more sophisticated, and therefore harder to spot, than any paragraphs copied and pasted from students’ own rudimentary searches.
Last month, the education sector was divided again when pupils studying for an IB were told they could submit essays including paragraphs composed by chatbots. Some teachers worry that vital skills such as sifting through information – reviewing, reflecting and editing to form an argument – could be lost or weakened by an over-reliance on new AI technology. Others say we should learn to embrace AI in this form, just as previous cohorts of students have embraced Wikipedia, Spark Notes, the internet per se. The ability to use, understand and appreciate the scope and limitation of all these tools is an important part of a successful working life. Which is presumably the theory behind the IB’s decision, given the IB diploma values wider research and self-directed study as well as subject knowledge.
In a 2021 survey of more than 1,000 students, almost three quarters were pleased they’d taken their GCSEs and two thirds were proud of what they’d achieved in doing so. Students (most of them) understand that doing well isn’t about copying and finding shortcuts to a good grade. It’s about really getting to grips with a concept, an argument or an idea. And they know this means doing their own research and piecing together their findings in their own way, albeit making use of the latest that technology can offer as part of that painstaking process.
Interestingly, teachers who have experimented with ChatGPT have found it can mark students’ answers accurately and consistently. They comment on its ability to hone and update its response as it’s provided with more criteria, for example, a specific mark scheme. Likewise, when testing its capacity to produce the ‘perfect’ answer (i.e. one that would receive full marks), they found it initially favoured a bulleted list, but could present its findings as full sentences once prompted. It could also highlight succinctly what was missing from a sample answer, such as insufficient examples against a specific argument, if that was what the question demanded. And not only could it assist students by providing them with a model answer – but it could also teach them by engaging in a Q and A with them, helping them understand an important concept through active, dynamic interrogation (the student interrogating the machine I mean).
I suspect what it does brilliantly, is edit and review its own responses, according to new inputs. So that as we adapt our ‘brief’ – i.e. what we ask of it – it has all the benefits of speed, focus and clarity, with none of the emotion or judgement that can make taking feedback on board hard for us humans. Teachers even said it could be self-critical, presumably as it took on board new information that undermined its previous responses. Seeing how an outcome is altered by tweaking the input, being a part of that process, learning not to be upset by constructive criticism – these are all hugely important skills for students, whatever career they plan to pursue. So maybe chatbots aren’t just about getting to answers more quickly without understanding fully – but actually quite the opposite. What do you think?
If you’d like to learn more about any of the topics covered here – or to talk to us about tutoring, school selection or university applications – drop us a line – we’d love to hear from you.
Until next time…
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“ REGENCY EDUCATION WAS ABLE TO HELP US WITH EVERY STEP OF THE APPLICATION PROCESS ENSURING THE EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS OF OUR CHILDREN - AN INVALUABLE SERVICE. ”
