2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

“Cheat sheets”, “crib notes” and “study guides” are just a few names associated with documents that students can use during an exam or quiz that supplements their course notes, textbook and/or other sources. Typically, but not always, such information is prepared by the student in advance of the assessment, to support students in organizing the key concepts being assessed.

Though the use of student-prepared study guides is not uncommon in college courses, there are relatively few research studies associated with study guides. Most of this limited work has evaluated preparation, use and impact (on grades, anxiety reduction, etc.)

Students spend a lot of their time working in pairs, small groups or teams during their college experience, whether in curricular or co-curricular activities. For the former, it is no surprise, considering the known educational benefits in a wide variety of ways associated with teamwork. Considering the impact of collaborative environments on student learning, we wondered about the value of study guides prepared in groups relative to individually prepared study guides. From our exploration of the literature, no such study current exists.

Accordingly, we implemented a study in a sophomore chemical engineering thermodynamics course to compare individual and team-based study guide preparation for use on course exams. Individual study guides were prepared for the first exam, while teams were used to prepare study guides for the second exam. The team-prepared study guide meant that the entire team used that same guide on the exam. Pre-exam questionnaires evaluated construction approaches, while post-exam questionnaires focused on value and usage.

Results of this study indicated that most students preferred individual study guide construction for a variety of reasons, including autonomy of selection of material to be placed on the guide. We evaluated the study guides based on three main themes: actual usage, planned strategy and value. From a usage perspective, both individual and team prepared study guides were used in the same way – easy to find formulas and similar example problems. A strategy that emerged from individual prepared study guides focused around how to access material quickly from the textbook, though this was not identified in team-prepared study guides. Finally, students found value in both individual and team-prepared study guides associated with not having to memorize material. Additionally, some students valued the discussion on course concepts that occurred in the teams when preparing the study guides.