The 24-hour exam is, perhaps, the most difficult online exam format, despite being open book. This guide will take you through 24-hour exam technique, tell you how you can organise your time on the exam day and give you some top tips to get through it.
The 24-hour format sounds the nicest on paper: you have 24 hours to complete an exam you would normally complete in three. Simple? As all university students know (or find out the hard way) you will spend as much time on an assignment as you are given. By this law, the 24-hour exam will take – you guessed it – 24 hours. We all know that spending an entire rotation of the Earth on one exam is not sensible or advisable, yet many of us get quite close. The important thing to remember is that it really isn’t supposed to take this long, and the key to a successful assessment is organisation in the run up to the exam, and a great game plan for the day.
Long-term preparation
The 24hr format is much like any other timed exam in that you need to remember the content. However, UCL’s 24hr exams are open book, and this means that understanding and applying the content is more important than the memorisation. Different methods of revision work for different people – maybe you’re someone who likes flashcards, or someone who prefers to write out notes again and again, or you like trying out exam questions. Whatever works for you works, but for the 24hr format, there are a few things you need to remember.
- Revision needs to be active! Whatever method of revision you use, you need to ensure that you are embedding your understanding, and the only way to do this is by recalling and applying your knowledge. There are a couple of fantastic ways to do this. One of the easiest is ‘blurting’: write out everything you can recall to explain a topic, after revising using your method of choice. Then, take a highlighter, and check everything you’ve blurted – highlight anything that is missing a key point, or isn’t clear. Go back to revising, and clarify only these bits with yourself – then repeat! This works best when you break down your topics in to short chunks. Another way to do this is by speaking – explain your concepts to a friend without your notes, and get them to ask questions. Simply explaining a topic to somebody will reveal the holes in your own understanding, allowing you to fill them in. Finally, summarise what you have learned every half-hour in your own words. This helps you bring everything together in the big picture and will aid your understanding.
- Your notes are key. Open book format means you don’t need to memorise everything, but you do need to understand where to find it. This means your notes need to be complete, labelled and organised, whether you write them or type them.
- Read around the topics. The 24hr format is supposed to take as long as the exam would in a face-to-face context. However, even in an exam hall, you are expected to be able to support your writing with some key papers. With the 24hr format, essays are expected to show some critical insight and to be well supported by a couple of sources. If you’ve read around your topic, it’s much easier to employ those findings in the exam, and you won’t waste time trying to find key sources on the day.
7 days to go
With 7 days to go, it’s time to get super familiar with your exam format. You need to try out some practise papers, and decide what the best approach is for you. This is also a great way to practise recalling information and organising all the knowledge you have. To start with, you might want to try a full mock essay or two, to get the hang of writing the essay start to finish. Don’t spend all your time doing this, unless you are sure it is really helping you – it might be more beneficial to write a detailed plan for each practise question than to slave for hours, answering a question that you probably won’t get in the real exam. To practice planning, start by writing out the key points you must cover according to the question. Think about the content you think is relevant, and write it down in bullet point form. Look at this list, and try to organise it into a structure that fits your word count. Finally, expand on each of the points a little, but not so much that you start to write the whole essay.
In this week, there are a couple of other important things to do. Firstly, get to grips with your mark scheme. Learn what is expected of you in the exam, and think about how you can meet the marking criteria. Secondly, go shopping! You want to make sure you’ve got all the food you need on the day, as it’s a lot easier to attempt these exams with nothing else to think about. Thirdly, let people know you have a 24hr exam. This helps to mitigate interruptions, but also means you have somewhere to turn if you need a break or a chat. Finally, sleep. There is no world in which getting a good night’s sleep won’t help you with an exam, so do what you can to rest up.
On the day…
On the day, you need to be up and ready for when your exam opens – this gives you the longest possible window to attempt it. Make sure you know what you are eating throughout (again, this gives you one less thing to think about and ensures you’ll keep yourself fuelled). More than anything, make sure you have a stable internet connection. For the exam: pick your questions as quickly as you possibly can, and run with them. Deliberating and switching will waste valuable time, and increase the likelihood of pulling an all-nighter. Once you have chosen your questions, plan them out and approach them as your worked out earlier in the week, and once they are planned, get to writing as quickly as possible. Try to use the recommended time allowance for the exam – time pressure can help keep you focused, and means you are more likely to finish the questions in a reasonable amount of time.
If your exam does take a little longer, that’s ok, but there are a couple of things to remember. Firstly, sleep will always help – a refreshed mind can pick out mistakes that the exhausted mind can’t see, so make sure you rest even if your exam is taking longer than expected! Secondly, don’t sit at the desk all day. If your exam isn’t going to plan, take a break, search for a change of scene, and take your eyes away from the screen for half an hour or so. The benefit of the 24hr exam is that you can take a rest break if you need it, and don’t be afraid to do so – it can make all the difference to your focus. Finally, make sure you stay hydrated and eat well; your brain won’t work without any food or water, so help it out!
We hope this exam guide helps you tackle the 24-hour format. It can be tricky to approach, especially with all the distractions at home. Try to be organised and well prepared, but most importantly, do your best to relax and recuperate, even when this is easier said than done!
Good luck!