Do It Yourself Digitization

Exam Confidence

I. Now that I am in my third year of college I have developed a good sense of how I am going to do on a test before I even take it. I have gone to some tests fully prepared and supremely confident after days of studying and taken others with no confidence because I didn't take as much time to study. My exam confidence is analogous because it is varies continuously and has no dimension that can be divided in order to measure it. My hope is to digitize my exam confidence level in order to get a better sense of how prepared I am for exams before I even take them

II. Because student's confidence relates almost directly to the amount of studying they have done, I'm going to separate the entire study process into 10 discrete units. So first, list the 10 most common ways you study for a exam. They don't have to be methods that you use for each and every test but instead methods that you have used on all exams in college. Here is a list of 10 study methods I use.

1.Read Entire Book
2.Read sections relevant to ID’s on Exam
3.Outline the book
4.Attend review session
5.Take practice exam
6.Prepare an outline for essay questions
7.Reread notes
8.Rewrite notes
9.Complete review sheet
10.Attend all class lectures

In order to digitize our confidence we are going to have to quantify each of the discrete units so rank each method in order, 1-10 (10 being the best/most useful way to study and 1 being the worst). I feel that by assigning numerical rankings to the study methods you find most helpful you will also be able to determine how much you know and how confident you are before a test. My rankings are in the chart on the upper left corner.

Now after ranking each method check to see which study methods you have actually used to prepare for your upcoming exam. List them separately in another column with the numerical ranking on the side and then add those numbers up. Your resulting number is your confidence level, that number is than scaled according to a letter grade.

55-35:A
35-20:B
20-10:C
10-5:D
5-0:F

So for example, if for a test I....

Attended all classes (10 points), Read the book (8 points), Prepared for the essay question (6 points), Attended the review session (4 points) and took a practice exam (3 points)

I would get 10+8+6+4+3=27 point confidence level translating to about a B on the test.

Unfortunately, digitizing your confidence level to predict what grade you are going to get is a less than perfect process. It is very difficult to separate the process of studying into discrete units because many times multiple study methods overlap each other and are difficult to separate. For instance split the process of reading a book and outlining it at the same time in order to make it discrete because for many students both methods depend on each other. It is also difficult to assign certain numerical values to study methods in order to quantify people's confidence level. Although I ranked study methods according to their success, people may preform each study task halfheartedly. A 10 for going to class each day doesn't do the student any good if they don't pay attention or take notes during class. Ultimately, digitizing people's confidence level may mislead them towards what grade they are going to get. Many different factors like sleep, motivation and execution effect a students confidence before a test, it can't simply be given a number based on a few study methods that they have completed. This form of digitization tends to oversimplify the process.