Dr. Bloch's 12 Steps For Academic Success

How to Use a Group to Create More Test Like Questions

Generally, students love to do problems to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter.

In most cases the number of problems at the end of chapters may not be enough and most students may obtain additional problems from commercial review books. However, the best source of problems will still come from members of the study group.

I believe that a student should be able to make up questions after reading and studying the material. Failure to do so would suggest to me that other issues are interfering with the learning process. In a number of cases students prepare excellent questions that may be clearer than some questions made by their professors.

If each group member prepares five questions on a given topic, the group of five are now exposed to a larger question bank.

Finally, in preparing the questions, the student or students should cite the source of the information (notes, text book and page number). This is important if you are challenged by your group members on the source of information that was used in the construction of the questions.