It’s normal to want to ease into the new year. However, doing so at the sacrifice of your studies will not set you up for success in your exams. Shane Burke, LMS Project Manager at Chartered Accountants Ireland, argues that focusing on your exams early will lead you to the best result
We understand that returning to studies after the festive break can seem a less than appealing prospect, particularly when you’re also in full-time employment.
By this point in January, the novelty of starting a new programme or a new academic year has well and truly worn off and finding new reserves of energy and commitment for the months ahead can feel like a big task.
However, the Institute is here to help you move forward with confidence. We’ll also explore the opportunities for exam practice and look at ways to help you return your focus to your studies when you feel pulled in different directions.
Staying engaged
Traditionally, January can be a time of lower engagement in learning activities.
However, getting back into the hard work of study matters, and the stakes get higher from this point on – we have the statistics to prove it.
Each year, we capture the engagement and attendance levels of students. More recently, the shift to an exclusively online education model has provided far more detailed data on student engagement. By mapping results against student activity levels, we can now identify those behaviours that make a big difference in whether you pass or fail a subject in the summer.
When our data team compares exam success to student behaviours and investigates the data available from the Learning Hub, we see a strong correlation between students who perform well in the exams and keep up with their studies.
The opposite also applies.
Data shows that students who did not focus on their studies after the holidays and remained at a lower level of engagement in the months that follow were at greater risk of either only just passing their exams with a low mark or failing them completely.
Busy season for firms
The data points to a considerable increase in engagement (not unexpectedly) on the Learning Hub in the weeks leading up to the main exams. However, the problem is, by that stage, it’s often too late to catch up.
While you’ve stood still, the work keeps mounting; sessions build up, and later lessons only make sense if earlier fundamentals are thoroughly understood.
As with any new job or contract, there are waves of work and busy periods you need to prepare for. Being new to the company, you might not be aware that you are about to be hit with long hours and a heavy workload over the next few weeks. This is driven by the volume of statutory audits which need to be managed by firms, with knock-on increased work in other areas of the business, such as tax and financial services.
Don’t worry. Your firms are well used to managing resources, and you will get through it with your team. You might even enjoy the energy and buzz involved in external assignments. However, finding study time can be extremely difficult during these periods.
We advise finding some time each week in early spring to maintain your studies. This might involve live webinars or putting aside some hours each weekend for study.
Remember, you’re wearing many hats as a trainee, employee, and student working towards a professional qualification. Over the coming weeks, your task is to keep all those balls in the air.
Exam technique
Our data shows it’s not enough to ‘cram’ in the weeks before the exam. If that was ever possible in the past, it’s definitely not now, given the move to online education. The course material is too long, and there is too much of it to really understand what you are being taught if you try to stuff it into your brain last minute. Students should be spending that pre-exam time practising questions in exam papers and prepping their exam technique.
This is also backed up by the data. Students who fail exams tend to have lower uptake on mock exams and practice papers. On the flip side, students who passed – and passed well – in the main exam either engaged in mock exams or utilised practice papers in each subject at least once.
Successful students study, learn and then practice what they learn in question banks and sample papers. You’ll also have ample opportunity to practice your technique on the online exam platform.
From late January, all students will have access to four sample papers in each subject. These sample papers are exam-quality and fully representative of the type of paper and distribution of marks you can expect in the main summer exams.
Then, closer to the mock exams, we will take one of these sample papers and upload this to the exam platform, Cirrus. This paper, known as the ‘Practice Paper’, allows you to practice what you’ve learned in exam technique from videos on the exams section of the Institute’s website (see ‘e-assessment’). You will have four attempts at each paper per subject.
But what if you want to practice now and not after March? Easy. Just practice the questions from the question banks for each session in Microsoft Word. It offers functionality similar to the Cirrus exam platform and is a great way to practice before the mocks.
All students have access to the mock papers released in March (CAP1) and May (CAP2). We strongly encourage you to use the mocks as another chance to practice on exam-quality papers, on the exam platform and in exam conditions.
What’s examinable?
A common question we get from students near the end of the academic year is what content is examinable.
Luckily, the Competency Statements outline what is examinable for each subject. These can be found in the exam information section of the Institute’s website.
In reading the Competency Statement, you will learn what’s examinable and how well you need to understand a certain topic to pass the exam.
Bringing it all together
As we’ve seen, January marks a crossroads for many in their studies. The pressure of the ‘busy season’ in work means that it can go two ways: you keep the pace or slack off.
In discussing what the data shows and matching student behaviours to exam success, we’ve demonstrated the importance of sticking to the programme. Even doing a little bit each couple of days will make a huge difference.
Now that it’s over to you. Start small and start now to set yourself up for success.