How to Manage Your Examination Time: 3 Vital Pointers for Students

As a teacher my job demands include working an as invigilator.  Supervising a paper usually takes up three hours of time or two depending on the duration of the exam.  Over the years I’ve watched students take several exams and one thing I've noticed is that students either don’t use their time well or they don’t use it at all.

This blog post is for you if you plan to use your examination time well…That is you plan to make judicious use of your time.  Here’s how you can make your exam time work for you…

1.       Take Stock

How much time do you have? Typically a final examination paper that carries 80-100 marks lasts for three hours.  You need to know…

·         The duration of the exam

·         How many questions you have to answer?

·         What is the paper pattern?

Most of this information is available to you ahead for the exam so it’s important that you take steps to find out about this much before your exam.

The paper pattern is very important (check for any changes that may have been introduced so that you avoid last minute hassles) so that you can plan how much time you can devote to answering each question. 

2.       Divide Your Time

As a rule of thumb, I would say…

·         Spend at least five-ten minutes reading the question paper

·         Mark the questions that you would like to answer (in case you have options)

·         Opt to write the answer that you know best first (first impressions are last impressions)

·         Decide an order in which you will write beginning with what you know best to the least preferred answer

·         If you have five questions to answer and each of them has equal content then divide 160 minutes by 5 and devote 32 minutes to writing each answer

·         Save the last five-ten minutes or so to underline, mark points and check for neatness and correctness

3.       Save Some Time

Wherever you can…save time…if you aim at answering one question in 35 minutes, try and complete it in 30-32 minutes, that way you’ll have a good amount of time on hand in case you want to make any corrections/changes.

Once you have finished writing, the time you have saved can be used to…

·         Check if you have everything covered

·         Check that you haven’t missed any question

·         Check that you have done justice to each and every question

·         Underline points

·         Draw neat charts, diagrams and flow charts wherever necessary

·         Read over your answers and add missing links wherever required

Most students complain they never have enough time to write.  The trouble is you have time…you just need to plan your reading and writing work well and you will be surprised at how well you have managed time!

Sloving Real Life Business Problems: Stretching the Learning Curve

Problems are precursors to solutions.   They are also precursors to new products and services.  Here's how teachers can make problems precursors to learning.  Here is an experiment I carried out with my first year students...

 While the study of cases relating to successful businesses helps students to understand what works best, the study of businesses which are failing or struggling to carve a niche is much ignored. 

 “Under the Mango Tree” is an organization which is working to promote bee keeping among farmers and is engaged in the production of non-synthetic honey.  The organization was looking for some ideas to aid successful commercialization of their product in Pune and the students were asked to come up with low cost solutions which did not involve advertising as it was unaffordable. 

Students of the first year BBM (IB) class visited malls, small shops and grocers and made suggestions like two day promotions at malls, hiring table space at M.G. Road walking plaza, stalls at schools on parent-teacher meets, diversification of the product in to capsules for face washes to capture the interest of people looking for natural beauty products, etc. 

These ideas were then passed on to Ms. Vijaya Pastala, the founder of “Under the Mango Tree”.