LibGuides: Revision and Exams: Open-book exams

Seen exams are where students are given the exam question ahead of the exam, giving them time to research and prepare content.
Seen exams do not permit students to bring in additional notes or academic materials such as books or journals.
Seen exams can reduce stress and anxieties around exams as they allow students to target their revision around the essay subject, rather than revising masses of content which may otherwise prove to be irrelevant under non-seen exam conditions.
Testing students using a seen exam format can enable a deeper demonstration of knowledge and understanding around the essay subject. You should put considerable time into the research and analysis of the question.

You should begin by examining the exam question and building up a strong understanding of exactly what it is you are being asked to write about. Identify key terms and instruction words within the exam question. The illustration below helps you to unpack an exemplar essay question.

Once you have made yourself familiar with the exam question, begin to explore the subject through a range of different academic materials.
Read, read, read! That’s right, in seen exams you will be expected to reference to academic materials in order to achieve the higher grades. Reading will help you build a greater understanding around the subject. You should make notes from any relevant materials you have read and cite any arguments/findings you may wish to use for your final response.
Unless instructed otherwise, you should prepare your response in essay format, including an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion. You can then start to populate each section with any content you wish to include in your final response. So, in theory, planning for a seen exam is a lot like planning for a regular essay-based assignment.
- The introduction will introduce the key terms within the essay question and the succeeding points you will talk about in the main body.
- The main body of your essay will feature the main points you plan to discuss in your response. We recommend you plan your main discussion points using the TED paragraph structure. Here is an example of how you may implement the TED framework in your essay

Topic	The subject of procrastination is relevant in organisations with regard to productivity, and researchers in universities are becoming more concerned with procrastination and its impact on student success.
Evidence	Hussain (2019) in a cross-university study reports that 87% of students identify procrastination as a key barrier to achieving academic outcomes, 46% use postponing work to motivate them to last-minute action, 23% believing that such tactics are detrimental to wellbeing and overall course achievement.
Discussion	The reasons for procrastination are complex, but our understandings are finally developing beyond the usual expressions of procrastination and its antecedence in perfectionist mindsets, Sirois (2019) argues that procrastination functions as a mood-repair tactic, which could fundamentally be described as misregulation as it is based on false assumptions which ultimately serve to undermine self-control in the longer term. Therefore procrastination could undermine identity beliefs and create more stress for individuals concerned with competence and performance.

Your conclusion should sum up your main points and give an overarching statement based on the evidence you have provided.
Ensure you plan in accordance with the allocated time for the exam. If the exam requires you to answer more than one question, think about how you will weight your time for each question.
Once your plan is complete – have a go at drafting out a response using your existing plan and notes. Timing yourself will enable you to figure out if your current volume of content is sufficient for the allocated response time.
Keep re-writing your response, relying on your notes as little as possible until you feel you can comfortably rehearse your points without your notes.
It is important not to get hung up on consistent wording when writing out your draft responses. The most important thing is that you have revised your notes thoroughly. It would be almost impossible for most of us to recite a whole essay word-for-word, so we highly recommend you don’t do this. If you can recite your notes comfortably, your overall style and flow won’t vary too much between your drafts.
Avoid writing out your notes in full sentences. Instead, you will find it much easier to revise content through quick, concise bullet points.
Provided you have put sufficient time and effort into researching and revising your notes, you will easily be able to expand on and develop your points without needing to recite big chunks of text word-for-word.

Revision and Exams