Coping with exams

Summer term began this week and that means exams season is here. It can be a stressful time revising, and taking exams so here are some useful tips and tools to help ensure you have a stress free time.

Check out the Buzzfeed style 14 top tips for exam success at RHUL courtesy of Campus Life.

It’s all too easy to forget to look after yourself. So consider taking advantage of the fun activities offered around campus in the Stressbusters Guide produced by the Students’ Union and College.

There are lots of tools which can help your organise your revision.

Braineos – Allows you to create flashcards and games to help recall.

Evernote – you can use this to keep track of your notes as it has a great search function so you can search for notes on a subject. You can also create check lists to keep yourself organised.

Mind mapping – There are several tools, both free and paid for available. Here are a few:

  • Popplet – allows you to add images, video and links.
  • us – A very simple mind mapping tool
  • Inspiration – this is a paid for piece of software which has a cheaper iPad app version which is easy to use and very good for revision.

Looking for past exams? You can find them via the library home page or this link.

The Library holds a number of books which provide you with exam tips. Many are shelved at 378.170281.

There are also several Ebooks with helpful tips:

Chapter Eleven of The Ultimate Study Skills Handbook has lots of tips.

4.7 of Study skills for psychology students has lots of general tips, not just of use to Psychology students.

Chapter 23 of  Study Skills for geography, earth and environmental science students

Pages 195 – 199  The Business Students Handbook

Library@ – find study spaces on campus!

We know there is a lot of pressure of study spaces at this time of year. To help address this, the College, the Library and the Students’ Union are working together to provide you with additional quiet spaces to study during this time.

For more information, please see the website.

Who edits Wikipedia?

Wikipedia edits have been in the news this week…

But how easy is it to change what’s said on Wikipedia, and can we trust it?

Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and this is part of what makes the site so brilliant: information from all over the world is being added all the time on all subjects. This is so much more comprehensive and efficient than a traditional print encyclopaedia in which a small group of editors can work for months and months to complete a book which may well be out of date by the time it goes to print! Wikipedia is current; as something changes in the real world, any one of us can log onto Wikipedia and make a note of it for all the world to see.

But did you know that Wikipedia has a pretty stringent editorial policy? Yes, you can make a change, but as anyone else in the world can change it again, there have to be some rules in place to make sure that it’s not chaos!

There are lots of guidelines that any edit must meet, and there must be a consensus of editors. Wikipedia encourage discussion of all edits, but especially major ones:

“Behind the scenes of Wikipedia articles, there is a large community of volunteer editors working to build the encyclopedia. It is not uncommon for editors to disagree about the way forward. That is when discussion and an attempt at reaching consensus should take place. Every article on Wikipedia has a talk page, reached by clicking the Talk tab just above the title (for example,Talk:Alexander the Great). There, editors can discuss improvements to the content of an article.”
(See: Discussion and Consensus)

Click on the ‘View History‘ page of any article to see the changes (and associated comments) that have taken place.

Occasionally arguments, or Edit Wars, break out between Wikipedia editors (and have even been the cause of academic studies…) Information is Beautiful have a nice visual of some of the most heartily fought battles.

So how can you tell who wrote what?

Listen to the Today programme on Radio 4 (skip to 1 hour 22mins) discussing the allegations made against Grant Shapps – it’s harder than it seems to work out who wrote what on Wikipedia.

And this uncertainty can be it’s downfall. It’s the reason Wikipedia isn’t considered a reliable source of information – the person editing the page on nuclear physics could be a world leading researcher, but they might not be. And they could at any time have their edits crossed out by another editor.

But there is a way you can try to make sense of the edits, and in doing so boost your own research. Plenty of us go straight to Wikipedia for an overview of a subject we know nothing about – but not many of us at all use the reference list at the bottom of each page.

Did you notice all these in-text references in Wikipedia articles?

wikipedia footnotes

Hover over them and they open up a window to an source.

wikipedia reference

You can click on these links and read the news, or academic article that the information came from. If the link asks you to pay for access, go straight to LibrarySearch and look for the title – you may find that Royal Holloway Library has paid for access to the article another way, and you can go ahead and read it! If not, there are ways to get hold of useful articles and books.

It is good academic practice to make use of references – perhaps the quotation on Wikipedia was taken out of context, or perhaps it’s the perfect article to use to support your essay. You can’t tell who wrote the article, but if they’ve provided supporting evidence, read that to see if it is valid!

How do you know if it’s valid? Think about these factors.

So, to conclude: Wikipedia is a good source of background and general information, but it’s more difficult to determine the quality of the information – so  make use of references provided, and if there are none: find them!

How to access Exam Papers

Very good luck in your exams! Here are some tips for reading past papers:

1. Are you on campus? If yes, carry onto 2.
If no, please use CampusAnywhere (If you don’t do this, you might not be able to see the papers.)

2. If you’re using Moodle: click on the Past Exam Papers link on the right to go through to past papers for that course code only.

past papers

3. To search the Past Papers database directly, go to the Library homepage, and click Exam Papers.

past papers homepage

4. Check you are logged in by looking in the top right hand corner – if it says log out your are logged in. If not then please log in.exam papers login

You can browse by Course Code, Department, and Year – and all exam papers can be downloaded as PDFs.

accesspaper

If you have any questions, please let us know!

Library Enquiry of the Month: How do I request a book?

If you want us to buy More Books for your course, or research, you can fill in our book suggestions form.

more books

Since September 2014, we have spent over £26,600 on More Books requests alone – these are in addition to books purchased from reading lists, and requests from staff members.

So if you find that there aren’t enough copies of a book, or you come across something really useful that isn’t in the Library, click on ‘Book Suggestions Form’ in your Subject Guide or Google search ‘more books royal holloway’ and fill in the form!

You will need to know:

  • the author(s)
  • the title and publication date of the book

But if you want to let us know the course code the book is for, and your student card, then we can put the book on hold for you and send an email when it arrives.

Ask your information consultant for more information on book orders.