Dare to be wrong.

According to numerous sources on the Internet, in 1897, William Thompson aka Lord Kelvin, then President of the Royal Society is quoted as having said:

“I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machines are impossible." 

I can find no credible reference for this quotation. The nearest I can find is a scribbled reply to Baden-Powell (founder of the Boy Scouts movement) declining an invitation written Dec 8th 1896, which reads:

Dear Baden Powell

I am afraid I am not in the flight for “aerial navigation”. I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society.

Yours truly Kelvin

(See original )

Actually I think the original is much more interesting, in particular the lovely play on words in the first sentence (“I am not in the flight…”) gives a much better impression of an intelligent throughtful man, rather than a comic Victorian stereotype. But apart from my obsessive need to get sources right – what point am I trying to make?

Education is supposed to be a process of self-development and improvement. But the way students are sometimes taught discourages mistakes, as though making mistakes was not only a bad thing but somehow a sign of failure. I believe that this is the wrong attitude to take. When I lecture students, one of the first things I say to them is them is that in my classes “There is no such thing as a stupid question”. For those who are unsure about this I reassure them “Now is the time to make mistakes – better to make a mistake now than in the exam, or with your patients.” And that seems to drive the lesson home.

Because whatever Kelvin said, and I’m inclined to believe that a great man like him probably didn’t make the crass statement often attached to his name, at least he was willing to say what he thought and take the chance of being wrong. It takes courage to risk being wrong, but the alternative is to never take a chance, and that is not a recipe for a great educational experience. 

Learning Styles 6 – Deep Learning. How deep is too deep?

Finally we come to the last of the LSP styles for channelling the basic learning drive (also called sensation seeking). This is the deep learning style. Deep learning is pure learning for its own sake – learning because you love learning for the intellectual interest, rather than as a means to an end. In some ways, deep learning is the opposite of goal orientation.

The positive of deep learning is that the learner will gain greater insight and understanding of a subject. They will read around the subject, chase up odd facts and ask questions about what they have already learnt. The deep learner is thus able to grow a rich and complex picture of their subject, or in the jargon of educational psychology, a rich semantic network. The great advantage of this is two fold. Firstly the personal satisfaction of learning a subject well can be profound, but secondly it can have great practical benefits when applying the material, as the learner has a reserve of knowledge and understanding which they can bring to bear on unexpected problems, which might flummox the purely goal-orientated learner.

So it’s all good, no? Well no. Deep learning involves making a deep investment in a subject. Deep investments can provide great returns, but like any investment they also involve an element of risk. While you are spending hours pouring over all those fascinating details and chasing up those wonderful intricate tangents, what’s happening to the goal? And what’s happening to the rest of your team members? A deep intellectual investment has to be judged like a financial investment – are you likely to get a return on the investment, and are you likely to get it quickly enough to be worthwhile? Answer that, and you know how much personal time and energy it’s worth for you and your desired outcome.

Learning Styles 5 – Emotional intelligence. Can you be too dispassionate?

The fourth channel for our natural curiosity, or sensation seeking drive, which the Learning Styles Profile (LSP), proposes is the fundamental in built learning drive is emotional intelligence – the tendency to apply logical thought to new information to make sense of it. Emotional intelligence is the ability to think dispassionately about new information, so that even information which you might otherwise have strong feelings about, can be considered and analysed rationally.

As I’ve mentioned with all of the other driver channels, each of them have their positives and negatives. The positives are usually obvious – as in this case. But what is the negative side of dispassionate analysis? Well, in this case, the problems can arise where emotional engagement is a positive motivational or contextualising element. This may apply either to your subject matter or the situation in which you are working. Excessive disengagement may leave you feeling that the subject matter is not personally important, which can leave you with a sense of emptiness. If you are working with other people, it can impair your ability to develop effective relationships. In the worst case, people may shun you, as they see you as either uninterested or just emotionally cold.

So, while emotional control is a useful tool, beware of being too dispassionate if a little emotional colour would be valuable.

BMJ Articles published

I’m pleased to report that the first in a series of four articles I wrote for the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Exam Technique was published today. The following articles will be published over the next three weeks.

In this series, I wanted to lay out a basic overview for young (and not so young!) doctors taking professional exams, based on published research and my own experience as examinee and examiner.

Today’s article is all about setting the right tone or attitude for applying the advice to follow. Without a positive and engaged attitude and a belief your own ability to achieve goals (called self-efficacy),  no amount of tactics and technique will help. Now when it comes to self-belief, I always distinguish between well-founded and delusional belief. 

The downside of self-belief was brilliantly portrayed by Chris Barrie in the 1990’s BBC comedy “The Brittas Empire” , in which he played Gordon Brittas, an obnoxious, utterly incompetent leisure centre manager, with an unshakable belief in his own (non-existent) abilities. This is not what I mean by self-belief! 

Anyone who is undertaking a serious professional exam will have some level of abilities. And leaving aside the Mr Brittas’s of this world for a moment, the commonest problem is that people underestimate themselves. So begin by looking back at what you have achieved, where you have succeeded, and balance these realistically against any weaknesses. With a sense of your own abilities rooted in reality, you have taken the first step to exam success. 

Oh, and happy Halloween!

Conscientiousness – the secret of a long life?

Isn’t it funny how co-incidences happen – serendipity it’s called! I write a blog on conscientiousness one day and a couple of days later see an article on it in the New Scientist ( quoting Kern & Friedman, Health Psychology. Vol 27(5), Sep 2008, 505-512).

Apparently scientists at University of California looked at the effects of personality traits on longevity and found that those who scored high on measures of conscientiousness had on average a 50% less chance of dying, at a given age, than those with low conscientiousness scores. The effect of this trait was higher than other characteristics known to affect longevity – intelligence and socioeconomic status.

So, if you want to live a longer life, be more conscientiousness? Well maybe. Remember that this is a correlation study - it shows that one thing is related to another, not that one thing causes another (the price of bread has increased as I’ve got older, but that’s not because the bakers of world put their prices up whenever I have a birthday!)

Conscientiousness is largely a temperamental, rather than character trait, in other words for most people it’s largely hard-wired rather then learnt. Now I know that this whole area of nature/nurture is controversial, but I’m going to stick my neck out here, and say that for most people there are basic traits which are difficult to change, like sensation seeking or introversion/extroversion. I suspect that conscientiousness may be like this – some people are just naturally more comfortable ‘getting their heads down and doing the right thing’ than others. 

I do believe that people can change and adapt, but we all start from different points. So a person who was not naturally predisposed to be conscientiousness (persistent, diligent, organised etc) probably could be more so, but it would be a stretch for them. And maybe trying too hard to be something you’re not isn’t the best way to live a long healthy life?

Learning Styles 4 - Conscientiousness: Fitting in or Losing the Plot?

This forth short article is about the third of the five elements of the LSP model - conscientiousness. This is another possible channel for the basic learning drive - to learn within a social context, understanding and adapting to the needs and complex rules of those around you.

The roots of the word conscientious  "con" (together) + "science" (knowledge) tell you that this attribute is about being part of a group, a society, perhaps even a team. Using your learning drive in a way that fits in, and provides for the common good can be a great boon. We are all part of a society, and our work affects other people, whether for good or bad, it has effects. As John Donne put it:

"No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Our relations to others, especially in the context of exam preparation, must also be thought of as a two-way street. The way you relate to others affects how they relate to you. Having peace and space to study, delegating work so that you can study, giving and receiving help, or working together can all be positive benefits of having other people in your life. Indeed too many candidates try to do it all themselves, without asking for help or recognising that other people are in the same boat - study groups can be a great resource, providing practical help, common motivation and a sense of 'us against the world'. 

However, like each of the learning attributes, conscienciousness has it's hazards, which need to be recognised and managed. In the exam, it's just you and the exam paper (or examiner/s). Like it or not, exams are a solo event. And as a unique individual you will have needs which may not fit in with what others want. So, yes it is important to have awareness of the people around you, and to make the most of their help, but sometimes just a little selfishness is necessary too! 

Learning Styles 3 – Goal Orientation. Is targeting always good?

In this third short article on the Learning Styles Profile (LSP), a new system for understanding and improving your ability to learn, I will discuss the second of the five elements of this model – goal orientation.

If you read the previous articles, you’ll remember that the basic drive to learn (sensation seeking) can be misdirected into socially negative outlets, or channelled using a number of behavioural styles. The first of these is goal orientation – the use of clear challenging goals to provide a focus for energy and activity. Being goal orientated has many strengths (like all the behavioural channels I will tell you about), but it also has potential downsides.

So what are the useful aspects of being goal orientated? Well, these are quite straightforward – knowing what you want gives you great clarity, and if done with confidence in one’s ability to succeed (so-called self-efficacy), then it brings a great sense of confidence which provides great motivation. So what’s wrong with that? Nothing is wrong with it, but there is a ‘dark side’ to all learning behaviours, and goal orientation is no exception.

The negatives of goal orientation are really to do with narrowing of one’s focus. What if you strive to achieve your goal no matter what? What if you are willing to cut corners? What if you’re willing to walk over other people’s feelings? What if you devote all your time and energy to one goal at the expense of others? Goal orientation without a sense of perspective can lead to an unhealthy obsession. So aim for goal orientation by all means, but keep a sense of proportion.

Next time, I will tell you about conscientiousness – how to use it, and how to avoid its negative side. 

Learning Styles 2 – Sensation Seeking. The basic novelty drive – for good or bad.

This is the second short article on the Learning Styles Profile (LSP), a new system for understanding and improving your ability to learn. In this section, I will discuss the first of the five elements of this model – sensation seeking.

Have you noticed that some people seem to be adrenaline junkies – seeking out interesting experiences just for the sake of it? Other people seem quite happy to go through the same old routine day after day and would be horrified by the prospect of a high-adrenaline activity like bungee jumping, parachuting, or even turning up to work without a tie!

Why is this? Why are people different in this respect? The answer appears to come from research into another area altogether into people with what are sometimes referred to as ‘addictive personalities’ , people who tend to repeated get into trouble with such activities as illicit drug taking, promiscuous sex, and thrill-seeking criminal activity. Research suggests that people like this tend to have unusually high levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO), which breaks down dopamine and other neurotransmitters associated with the arousal and reward systems. The proposal is that people with low levels of MAO (and probably other neurological changes too) tend to require much greater levels of external stimulation to maintain their levels of dopamine (reward neurotransmitter) than people with normal levels of MAO. People with this variant will therefore tend to seek out novel stimulating situations more than other people.

The sensation seeking trait is just a biological drive, which of itself is neither good nor bad – the key is in how this drive is channelled. People who have difficulty channelling a high sensation seeking drive may well end up seeking quick thrills, which are not only unsatisfying in the long run, but may also be down-right destructive. Those high sensation seekers who are able to channel their drive will tend to be the high energy driven individuals who will rise to the top in whatever they do. The remaining four elements of the LSP describe the main channels through which this basic drive can be utilised.

So what does it mean if you have a low sensation seeking drive? Well, since it is thought to be a biologically (probably largely genetic) determined trait; there are limited prospects for changing your sensation seeking drive, without the use of drugs. (I will discuss so-called ‘cogs’ or cognitive enhancement drugs in another blog) So if you are the sort of person who isn’t highly driven to find new experiences for their own sake, then that’s probably just the kind of person you are. You may be able to develop a more curious approach, but it’s unlikely that this will ever be a strong part of your personality. However, there are lots of other drivers, which you may have. Perhaps you have a strong need for prestige or social status? Or perhaps working for your family is what really matters? If you aren’t driven by the need to know new things, you need to find what does motivate you and use that instead.

The key is self-knowledge – knowing what drives you, and channelling those drives to achieve desirable outcomes.

Learning Styles 1 – What is a learning style?

It should come as no surprise that different people learn in different ways. We are all different; we all have different preferences for food, sport and politics. This doesn’t mean that one way of doing things is necessarily better than another – you may work well early morning when I am still huddled over my coffee, whereas I may prefer to burn the midnight oil whilst you are fading!
Research shows that some approaches to learning tend to be more effective than others, and it would be foolish to ignore this knowledge (although that is precisely what a lot of educators and students tend to do!). But beyond that how do we differ? Psychologists study and measure all sorts of traits, a key one for academic performance being intelligence or IQ. There is a whole literature on this controversial subject, which I am not going to go into here. But whatever intelligence is or isn’t, it does seem to a correlation between it and academic success. But that isn’t the whole story, because even for people of the same IQ there are other traits which seem to effect not just how well they learn, but their preferred approaches.

There are a plethora of theories and measurement tools about different learning styles. Some have better experimental data than others and some have more coherent theories behind them. I’m not going to go into that here, because I want to focus on a pragmatic approach to helping people learn to learn.

The system and tool which I tend to use is the Learning Styles Profile (LSP), developed by Prof Chris Jackson from University of New South Wales. This is a synthesis of several earlier theories and tools, which has been validated by large studies looking at correlations of measured traits with each other and with external measurements of interest, such as academic and workplace performance.

In the Learning Styles Profile (LSP), five personality traits are recognised. One of these - Sensation Seeking – is seen as being a more biologically driven ‘basic drive’. The other four are channels for this drive which can lead to successful learning outcomes. None of the channels are better than others, all have places where they are useful, and all have downsides. In the next few blogs I will discuss each of these five elements of the LSP in detail. If you are interested in learning more about your own learning style, there is an online LSP test which you can take (http://www.cymeon.com/lss2.asp ). The results not only tell you your preferred style, but also take you through, in detail, what this means for you, and giving suggestions for improvement. I would recommend it.

Masterclass Report

The September Exam Masterclass ran this weekend at Birkbeck College in London – it was a great event and the attendees gave great feedback. Why did they find it useful? What they told me was that the class gave them the opportunity to look at taking exams with some perspective. Normally, busy people tend to get their heads down and just plough on with the task at hand. The problem with this approach is that it sometimes means repeating strategies which have failed in the past because they are familiar. We all tend to repeat familiar routines, and when methods produce success then it’s great to re-use them.

The problem arises when people don’t have the perspective to re-evaluate tactics which aren’t succeeding. People in a cycle of failure may think that if they only work harder or longer that they will succeed. But if you’re facing in the wrong direction running faster or for longer won’t get you to your destination!

A workshop like the Exams Masterclass allows attendees to look again at what their attitudes are, how they’re organising themselves, and learn how other people succeed. We all have distinctive learning styles, and there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach to passing exams, but there are quite a lot of clearly ineffective strategies which you need to avoid.

The course participants left the day with a set of new ideas about how to succeed, and with a renewed hope and energy to succeed. I’d say that’s a good day!

Masterclass Report

The first exam Masterclass ran last weekend at Birkbeck College in London and was a great event. The attendants really found it useful and I got some great feedback. Given that this event has been nearly six months in the planning, it was really gratifying to have it go off so well, and the next events are already scheduled for September, October and November.

As I explained at Masterclass, what I call the ‘exam knack’ is where three factors come together – knowledge, techniques and attitude. Given that there are lots of course that teach subject knowledge, this Masterclass was unique in focussing on psychological and practical exam techniques and getting into the right attitude for study and success.

We covered time management – both long-term (over months of study time) and short-term (the hours and minutes of the exam). In this we covered the impossibility of time management (time just IS – you can’t manage it!), how people confuse ‘no time’ with ‘no energy’, the distinction between activity and action, and much more. We discussed adult learning and memory – how adult learning differs from childhood learning. I challenged the attendees to consider how developed their own learning was, and we looked at a powerful model of learning styles, using an online test of learning styles – a very interesting discussion of the pros and cons of learning drive and goal-orientation followed! Performance is a branch of positive psychology where exams and sporting events overlap – we discussed the importance of being stressed enough, and how to access the flow state (or the zone). I then used a positive visualisation exercise to help people improve their exam performance.

Feedback comments included: “a really motivating experience”; “I learnt an awful lot” and “I wish I had done this course at the beginning of my career”.

As I said, a good day!

Guess what? Guessing's good.

I was reading about guessing recently. In the context of multiple choice question (MCQ) exams, guessing is seen as a source of error. That's because it's a reason for people gaining marks which don't reflect their knowledge in the subject being tested. I'll talk later about using this as a tactic for exams, but it got me thinking about guessing in real life.

Exams are supposed to perform a useful function - measure or predict something useful about a person. The theoretical construct of an exam, particularly an MCQ exam, seems to imply that certain things are 100% true or false, and that this is a useful thing to measure. In most walks of life, and especially in those areas where thinking and expertise is valued, one of the abilities which is most prized to being able to make judgements when everything is NOT certain. Deciding when there's insufficient information to be sure, or insufficient time to process the information, is what it means to be an expert. That's why it's easy to be an 'expert' in retrospect.

I think that another name for this skill - deciding under uncertainty - is 'guessing'. If you practice making decisions when you're not sure, the better you become at it, the better you are likely to function in the real world. It can also be a valuable exam skill!

Of course this isn't to say that 'blind guessing' is a valuable skill, or that professionals make wild guesses without thinking about them or considering the outcomes. You wouldn't go to a doctor who tossed a coin to decide whether or not to send you for a test! No, the real skill is in making informed, educated guesses, realising the limits of your own knowledge, and being prepared to deal with the consequences of being wrong.

Failure IS an option.

I had a disappointment last week. A Masterclass on how to pass MCQ’s which I had been planning to run next weekend had such a poor response that I had to cancel it. Partly the reason was my fault – it’s important to take ownership of your mistakes. And partly it was down to an advert which was supposed to run on a critical date being forgotten by the publishers. Oh well, brush myself off, learn from the mistakes, and move forward to the next one in July (link).

It just goes to show that just like exams, running an event carries a risk of failure, and you have to accept that. Anything which is worthwhile carried a risk of failure – where, for example, would the sense of achievement be in walking along a wide, flat path on the floor (unless you were drunk)? Compare that to walking along a tightrope several metres in the air. What’s the difference between the easy path and the tightrope walk? It’s the skill and dedication required to do the latter, and the willingness to go ahead despite the possibility of falling off.

I had an exam coaching client recently, who told me “I have to pass this exam…I can’t afford to fail.” That’s quite a statement, and if it’s framed in a positive light, can be highly motivating.
However this kind of self-talk can also be quite negative, and actually lead the person towards failure rather than away from it. If this client is saying to himself “I can’t fail…failing would be a disaster…I’ve got to make sure I don’t fail…” he’s doing two things. Firstly he’s focusing his attention on the thing he wants to avoid, which according to some NLP practitioners (this isn’t something you can easily prove scientifically) makes it more likely his subconscious will find ways of achieving failure (This is rather like walking along a tightrope saying in your head: “Mustn’t fall off…. Mustn’t fall off”) And secondly, he may well be increasing his levels of stress unnecessarily to the point where the worry itself starts to impede his performance.
So what should you do about worries about failure?

Here are a few handy hints:
1. Accept that failure is a possibility (anything else is self-delusion!)
2. Perform a reality check on failure – what would actually happen if you failed the exam? For most people, a bit of embarrassment and annoyance, and the inconvenience of having to sit it again.
3. Tell yourself that you could cope with those consequences – not like them, but cope with them.
4. Now, focus on passing.

How to pass exams 2 – failure mindset

I talked previously about the ‘success mindset’, and I’m hoping that you’ve taken that on board, but sometimes it helps to be clear about the other side of the coin, just to ‘ram’ the point home. So is there a failing mindset that has been identified by educational psychologists? Yes there is!
Now, like everything in psychology, I am describing tendencies and correlations here – so if you are a person who performs brilliantly in your exams, and have some (or perhaps all) of the traits described here, then all I can say is ‘well done and good luck to you’. However, if you are struggling, and recognise some of your traits here, then maybe there are a few clues about how you might need to begin the process of change.

The mindset which strongly correlates with exam failure and underperformance is often called the ‘surface learner’. The surface is learner is uncritical and unquestioning, as Schmeck (1993) described them:

"…we have adults who do not see it as their function to reflect, form opinions, evaluate, disagree, oppose, challenge, conceptualise or integrate information in meaningful ways. We have adults who plod along without thought until, at roughly 10 year intervals, they have what has come to be popularly known as the ‘mid-life crisis’ - permitting themselves for one brief period to ask ‘what does it all mean?’" Ouch!

Surface learners are people who, in the psychological lingo, tend to have an external locus of control. In other words they believe that their success depends largely on factors outside of their control, and so there is little that they can do to change their chances of success. With this belief on board, it tends to become a self-fulfilling prophesy - believe that you are impotent, and you will tend not to put in much effort, and so your success WILL depend largely on external factors!
Surface learners tend not to question or think about what they are actually doing. They tend to focus on the process of learning (turning up to classes, handing in work on time, reading their textbooks) rather than what it’s all about. Surface learners tend to view education as something that is done to them; rather than something they actively take part in.
If you recognise some of your traits in this description, then maybe it’s time to challenge yourself and make some changes.

You are not a god. You are not totally in control of everything in your life. Sometimes you will have bad days, and rotten luck. But you do have a lot of ability to affect what happens in your exams. By taking control and responsibility, you change your own attitude and also have a big effect on your likelihood of success.

Don’t be spoon-fed: grab that spoon and feed yourself!

How to pass exams 1 – success mindset

I'm just finished writing a short series on Exam Technique for the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which I hope will be published in a few weeks. Now I can’t copy it here word for word due to copyright restrictions, but I will let you in on the basic ideas contained in the four articles.
You can think of exam preparation in three stages – study (lasting several months, hopefully); revision (a few weeks) and performance (the last 24-48 hrs). However, before getting down to any of these, we need to address the matter of attitude. With a positive attitude, you can address the challenge with a bit of energy and verve. With the wrong attitude, the most effective strategies or tactics will fall flat.

The psychologist Albert Bandura introduced the concept of self-efficacy, which is central to meeting a challenge like an exam. Self efficacy is more specific than just feeling good about yourself (that’s self-esteem), it means having a belief in your ability to make things happen. Without that belief, it’s difficult to motivate yourself into even trying to get anything done. Self-efficacy is strongly correlated to success both at work and in academic settings. Although it’s preferable to have a self-image based (at least largely) in reality, if you overestimate your abilities a bit, it will probably become a virtuous cycle, as your strong belief in your abilities motivates you to try harder, and so leads to more success.

How do you develop a sense of self-efficacy? Well it’s partly about just starting to realising that you have a lot more power in your life that you may think – the examiners may set the questions, but you are in control of how much study you do, how well you manage your time and stress, and so on. Once you realise that you have some power, use it. In a teaching context, taking an active rather than passive role can improve your enjoyment as well as the educational benefit you get from it. Ask questions, challenge ideas, think about what you’ve been told, rather than just accepting it all.

If you believe that your success is largely down to things outside of your control – your teachers or luck in getting the right questions, remember the story of the world champion golfer (this story has been variously attributed to Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jerry Barber, but the point of the story is the same, whoever said it).

A golfer made a brilliant shot near the end of a difficult round, and someone in the crowd was heard to remark,
“Oh, what a lucky shot!”
The golfer turned to the spectator, and smiled:
“Yeah, and you know what?” he said, “The more I practice, the luckier I get!”

Get lucky – put in some practice for those exams!

Time Flies when you’re having fun!

Gosh, I just realised it’s been two weeks since my last blog – it’s really flown by! More talk of exams has been buzzing through our house lately, as my son has been doing the dreaded SAT’s. Actually I think a bit the old block has chipped off, because he seems to be one of those people who finds exams easy – he’s got the exam knack. I was going to give him a bit of a boost with a couple of sessions of hypnosis, but in the end I never got around to it, and he was still fine!

The SAT exams have been in the news lately, because of suggestions that UK children are among the most ‘examined in the world’. I’m not sure if that includes China, where the pressure in education from primary to postgraduate seems to be ferocious, if various documentaries are to be believed. However, there is a growing concern in the UK that the frequency and extent of exams in schools are becoming more of a distraction from education than a contributor to it.

As I’ve said before, exams can have several functions – measure of potential, measure of achievement, predictor and motivator. However, exams, especially pen and paper ones, do only measure a small proportion of a child (or adults) abilities. And in the ‘industrial scale’ education system we have now there is a great tendency to measure what is measureable, rather than measure what matters. As schools find themselves under pressure to perform in league tables, they push (this verb could be anything from ‘encourage’ to ‘demand’) teachers to take time to prepare children for the test. And for what? To increase standards, we are told. And how are these standards judged – by test results of course. Mmmm – tautology anyone?

How to cheat at exams

It doesn’t often come up directly, but people sometimes hint at it – can you, should you cheat at exams, and if so how can you get away with it?

Well I have to say at the outset that I’m not a fan of cheating, because I think it’s…well, cheating. Like stealing or lying, I think it’s wrong. But you might well say, it’s all very well for someone who’s passed all the exams to say that – I’m not in the desperate position that you are.

OK, so let’s look at cheating. Cheating basically means doing something to give you an unfair advantage over others in the exam. Now you could argue that employing someone like me to coach you gives you an unfair advantage over those who try and do it by themselves. And in a sense that’s true – remember the scene from the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ where Sam Mussabini, the professional coach of 1924 Olympic champion Harold Abrahams had to hide away in a Paris hotel room whilst Abrahams won the gold medal? For many athletes of the time, having a professional coach was seen as cheating, nowadays it is normal practice.

Methods of cheating in professional exams vary from getting someone else to take the exam in your name; having cheat sheets up your sleeve or texting someone for the answer; through to copying the answers from your neighbour on the next desk. The exam boards are wise to all these moves - for example, the RCP employs a statistical computer programme to look for similar patterns of answers from people sitting at adjacent desks. Getting caught cheating in a professional exam means possibly ruining your hard-won career, or at least making for a very embarrassing conversation with your boss.

So if you are going to cheat, whatever system you come up with needs to be:
1. Novel – so the examiners aren’t expecting it
2. Foolproof – so that you won’t get caught
3. Deniable – so that if you are caught, they can’t prove anything
4. Effective – make enough difference to your marks to be worthwhile

Now it may well be that you are ingenious enough, clever enough and determined, you may well be able to come up with a system which meets these criteria. However, if you really are that ingenious, clever and determined surely it makes more sense to use your talents to plan and execute a good exam preparation programme?

And to be honest, most people who think they are that clever just aren’t. That’s why people regularly get caught cheating. Cheating well is like being a good criminal – if you’re good enough to get away with the crime, you’re good enough to get what you want honestly. And if you’re not good enough to do the exam properly, you’ll probably not make a very good job of cheating either!

Interesting University opportunity

I had an interesting and potentially important meeting last week with the head of the External Courses department of a London university – I won’t give details of where and who just yet, but hopefully if things develop, you’ll be reading more about it in the coming weeks and months.

Basically UK universities have been encouraged over the past few years to expand not only the number of students, and the diversity of background that students come from, but also to expand the opportunities available to local communities for education and personal development. I have spoken previously in these blogs about the challenges of these changes, which are seen by some within the university world as ‘dumbing down’ and a dilution of standards.

However, many universities have taken up the challenge and developed courses not only for the students on campus, but also for adults in the local community. I met up with the university to discuss offering short courses or workshops on Exam Preparation and Performance. Tackling exams is a universal study skill, but for many people is a source of unnecessary anxiety and so a barrier to otherwise good people accessing education. The skills developed from tackling exams are also highly transferrable to other situations where people are assessed and judged in a short time, such as interviews or public speaking.

So I had a very productive meeting with an extremely enthusiastic head of department, which was quite refreshing to see, given the loss of morale and general spirit of gritted-teeth one so often finds in the academic world today. We are going to look at how I can structure a course which will incorporate Exam Coaching - my unique combination of research-grounded, educational psychology (‘left brain’) and imaginative, intuitive techniques (‘right brain’) into their programme of external courses for the upcoming academic year. It’s an exciting project, and from what I’ve seen so far, an enthusiastic partner to work with. Watch this space!

The Exam Knack

Some people seem to find exams easier than others – and are said to have got ‘the knack’. Now if someone finds an exam difficult because they haven’t put in the work and actually learnt the subject matter, well that’s just an ‘own goal’. Exams are designed to fail those people and rightly so.

No, I mean people who have put in the work and still struggle with exams – they lack the knack. I read a great piece in a local paper from Wicklow in Ireland (isn’t the internet a great tool!) about a high achieving student called Katie Sherlock (Link: http://www.wicklowpeople.ie/news/technique-the-key-says-scholar-katie-1344524.html) who describes the exam knack really clearly:

It's just a knack I have for focusing on what I need to answer an exam question and paring down all the information to what is relevant, which is a formula that seems to have worked for me so far!

Remember the exam axiom I mentioned a few weeks ago? Young Katie has got it sussed and is really just re-stating the exam axiom (To pass any exam, score more points than the pass mark) – it’s all about being really clear about what needs to be done and then focusing on just that.

Haven’t got the knack yet? Don’t fret. Like any skill, it is learnable. If you can learn an academic subject, then you can learn study and exam performance skills. But like any skill it also requires awareness, focus and a bit of work on your part.

Get the exam knack, and you might even start enjoying exams. Yes, that really is possible!

Exam Preparation – working efficiently

I was asked a question yesterday by someone preparing for a post-graduate medical exam: “What do you mean by working efficiently?” I did my best to answer the question ‘on the hoof’, so thought I would share it and try to expand on it here.

You’ll notice that I usually talk about ‘exam preparation’ rather than ‘revision’ or ‘study’ – that’s for a reason. This is because I feel that it reflects an important change of focus that helps people work more efficiently. To talk about studying doesn’t imply any end-point or goal. Revision suggests a second view, a ‘re-look’ at something, which suggests that exam preparation starts late in the day, just before the exam.

So I use the term exam preparation as I think that this creates a better idea of how to work efficiently. Being efficient means getting maximum outcome from minimal effort. In any serious exam, this ‘minimal effort’ for most people will be a hell of a lot of hard work. Here are my top five tips to make sure your hard work bears fruit:

1. Time management starts by giving yourself time to do the job. Exam preparation starts as soon as you decide (or realise!) that you want/need to do the exam. Ideally this should be several months (by which I mean six, rather than two) before the event. If you’ve left it to the last minute, you really need to ask yourself if it wouldn’t be better to wait for the next sitting.
2. Time management continues by actually using the time you’ve got well. You’ve got 24 hours in every day, just like everybody else. You need to focus and prioritise. What in your life doesn’t contribute to your exam preparation? As far as possible, either: do it, dump it, downsize it or delegate it.
3. Don’t confuse lack of motivation with lack of time. Many people complain that they have ‘no time’, and yet seem to find time to watch TV, sit chatting with friends, or surfing the net. You do need some leisure time to recharge your batteries. But beyond that, many people’s lack of time is actually lack of energy or motivation to use their time. Find something about taking the exam that really, really matters to you – the kudos of having the letters after your name, the great new job you’ll get, or time to commit back to your family. Whatever it is, remind yourself of why you are doing this whenever you find yourself wasting time.
4. Know yourself and work with your natural strengths and weaknesses – if you’re a morning person, get up early and work in the early hours; if you think visually, use pictures and diagrams to help you learn; if you need external motivators, get your spouse or housemate to check your progress.
5. Plan to pass the exam. The axiom of exam preparation is that you need to work out how to get more marks than the pass mark. So get the curriculum, handbook and past papers, and work out the best way to focus your effort, so as to maximise the marks you get for each minute of effort.

How to fail at exams and life

I’ve been thinking about the importance of attitude recently, and reading around the subject. I came across some interesting research which explained something I’ve noticed. There are a number of different attitudes or ‘styles’ to learning, which psychologists recognise and measure. Different ones have strengths and weaknesses in different circumstances. However, there’s one attitude which experience suggests is a ‘failing’ one, and which is confirmed by research to correlate with poor performance.

Psychologists call this a ‘surface’ approach, but I think a better name might be a ‘passive learner’. It’s the sort of approach where someone expects to be spoon-fed, or has the attitude ‘teach me’ rather than ‘help me to learn’. Surface learners often attend classes well, and hand in all their homework on time, but do it because they confuse process and outcome – they seem to believe that the process of attending class and handing in homework IS learning, rather than being a means to an end. As one researcher who studied people adopting this attitude put it “students who did not get ‘the point’ failed to do so simply because they were not looking for it.”
Surface learners tend to believe that they are passive recipients of education, like empty bottles that knowledge has to be poured into. To them the teachers’ job is simply to pour the knowledge in. Like a baby waiting to be spoon-fed, all they have to do is to sit in their high chair with their bib on, and open their mouth. People with this attitude have a viewpoint called external locus of control – they believe that control over their lives is mostly external – outside of their control, and so believe that poor outcomes are due to bad luck, mean people ‘getting at them’, in fact anything apart from themselves.

I will tell you more about recognising and developing learning styles later, but the first lesson if you want to succeed is to recognise that you are in control of your own life. You are responsible for a lot of what happens to you. In the context of exams, you need to actively engage with your learning and performing. Don’t sit waiting to be spoon fed, grab the spoon and start feeding yourself!

How to pass exams 2: Using the Exam Axiom

I wrote last time about what I call the exam axiom –

To pass any exam, score more points than the pass mark

Of course it sounds obvious – that’s what an axiom is a statement of an indisputable starting point, like x = x in algebra. So how do you go on from there? Well to score more points than the pass mark, what do you have to do? I think that there are three main areas to address:

1. You need to know the exam. If you are taking an exam that matters to you and your career, you should know the exam like a sportsman knows their event. A rally driver knows what speed to enter each corner, which gear to be in, when to accelerate and when to brake, and the whole plan will have contingencies for rain, flat tyres or illness. So do you know your exam? What is the pass mark? How are marks awarded? What is the question structure? How do you need to pace your timing? What will you do if your mind blanks out, or your pencil breaks? What attributes are the exam setters trying to test, and what are the exam markers trying to measure?

2. You need to know the subject. Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you’re taking an exam in accountancy you need to know some accountancy! However, it’s not that straightforward. You need to know the subject in the context of the exam. This means knowing what the curriculum is, so that you don’t waste time and effort learning material that isn’t examined. But it also means knowing the approach to the subject which the exam is looking for – is it mainly a test of knowledge, or a demonstration of skills, a test of application of knowledge, or a test of sound judgement within the subject area?

3. You need to know yourself. There are two aspects of this. Firstly it’s really valuable to know about how people in general learn and perform. There is an expanding body of research and experience in educational psychology, much of which is ignored in practice. Secondly, it’s important to know about yourself as an individual – what is your learning style? You can discover this by taking profiling tests to show how you tick, and by using your revision as an opportunity to see what works for you.

Remember, in any performance situation – a job interview, a public speaking engagement or an exam, there are some things that you cannot change and some things that you can. You can’t change your personal history or intrinsic ability (e.g. IQ), you can’t change the structure of the exam or curriculum. But you can change how you respond to these things. To use an analogy, you can’t change the weather, but you can change your clothes or your travel plans.

How to pass exams: the Exam Axiom.

There’s a lot written and talked about passing exams, tests or whatever. And lots of it is true and useful. But it’s easy to miss the wood for the trees sometimes when you’re being bombarded with ‘good advice’ from left, right and centre. Sometimes it’s helpful to re-focus; or to put it another way, to cut through the cr*p to the heart of the matter.

In his Meditations (Book 8), the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius recognised this when he said:
This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its form? And what is it doing in the world? And how long does it subsist?

What is the fundamental Exam Axiom? OK, ready for it? Here it comes…drum roll…

To pass any exam, score more points than the pass mark.

Good, eh? What do you mean it’s obvious? Well of course it’s obvious. But how many people have actually told you that, in such simple terms before? How many times have you actually thought about it like that?

Although it seems pointlessly obvious, actually the Exam Axiom is pointedly obvious!

It focuses your thinking on what you actually need to do to pass. You need to score more points. So the next question becomes how do you score those points? The answer to this many vary between candidates and exams, but this is the basic truth that you have GOT to address if you’re going to succeed. How do you score more points in this type of exam? What’s holding back your score – is it your knowledge, or your timing? Do you drift off from the question, or ignore the exam instructions? Do you actually know how your exam is marked, and if not have you asked? Are you losing marks because the examiner can’t read your answers, or are you making silly transcription errors in multiple choice questions?

The Exam Axiom isn’t the last word in exam technique, but it’s a good starting point to focus your strategy. How can YOU score more points that the pass mark? Write your answers on one side of the paper only.

Finding time for time management

I’ve just finished writing the first draft of an article on time management in exam preparation, which I had planned to do last week! Yes, it was on my To Do list, but it didn’t get done. No there wasn’t any unexpected crisis which came up. It’s just part of the problem with managing your time – we’re all human and sometimes things don’t happen as anticipated.
So now I’ve finished the article, what pearls of wisdom can I impart about managing your time if you’re trying to study for that important qualification?

OK, you’re busy people, so I’ll be quick:

1. Understand that so-called time management is really self-management. You can’t actually do anything to time (like 'find it' or 'make it') you can only change what you do with the time you have.

2. Realise that we all have the same amount of time. You have the same 24 hours in each day as I have. Everybody has the same time available for revision, so if some people achieve a lot it’s not because they have more time than you – it’s because they manage themselves better.

3. Get it into your head that you will always have more stuff you could do than you can do. And in a lot of professional exams, there will always be more knowledge you could learn than you every will be able to – there’s always one more research paper, one more case report. That means that you’ve got to make sensible choices. If your goal is to pass an exam with a clear cut curriculum, then you need to ensure all the curricular material has been covered before you start reading the ‘interesting but not examined’ stuff. Of course at the other end, there are always more interesting things to do than revise! As the old song says:

“I’m busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do…”(See the original 1949 performance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAYLD06MefI)

4. Recognise when ‘not enough time’ is really a code for not enough motivation or energy. It’s strange how people with ‘no time’ manage to spend three hours a night watching TV. It’s OK to use time productively re-charging your batteries, but on other occasions when you have ‘no time’ maybe you need to ask “How important is this to me?” and decide whether or not your goals have changed.

5. Plan what needs to be done to achieve your goals, rather than just fire-fighting whatever seems most urgent, since, in the words of Eisenhower:

"What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”

6. Finally, learn to say ‘NO’. Of course, it’s important not to alienate people or become mean and selfish just for it’s own sake, but saying ‘No’ to people respectfully and appropriately when you really can’t help them will gain you more respect in the long run than saying ‘Yes’ to everyone, then letting them down. Your friends and colleagues deserve respect and help, but so do you! And if you don’t respect your own time, why should anyone else?

What are exams for?

You may not like them, you may not enjoy them, but have you ever stopped and asked the question – what are exams actually for? Because until you answer that question, you can’t argue that they do or don’t work. If you want to claim that exams are a bad way to achieve some goal and should be changed, you have to first decide that goal they are supposed to be achieving in the first place.

The first ‘exams’ were really competitions to decide who should gain a prestigious job – the ancient Chinese Imperial court used various tests of ‘noble arts’ to choose from between many bright eager young men who wanted to become civil servants. They were introduced as a fairer system than the earlier system of patronage – who you and your family knew. This is the first purpose of exams - a fairer way of choosing people, which is still used in job application.

In mediaeval universities, students who had completed a course of study would be ‘examined’ by a formal interview (like the modern day via voca or oral exam). The purpose of these examinations was to demonstrate expertise – to show that a person had reached a standard. This is the second purpose of exams – demonstration of expertise, which is still used in for example, the driving test.

In the twentieth century, examinations became more and more commonly used. The introduction of IQ testing and 11-plus selection produced a concept borrowed from industrial quality testing – a statistical prediction approach. The idea here is to take a sample of a person’s performance, and use it to predict how they will perform in the future. This presupposes that people’s behaviour at one time predicts their behaviour in future – if you are intellectually bright at the age of 10, you are more likely to be bright at 15, 35 and 50. So this is the third purpose of exams – prediction.

Finally, why do teachers sometimes tell their students ‘There’s be a test on this’, or why do some (more dedicated!) students actually do the tests at the end of book chapters? It’s because it helps to provide a motivator for study. That’s why Weight Watchers groups have weekly weigh-ins, to provide feedback and motivation. So this is the final purpose of exams – as a teaching tool.

So now if you want to moan about exams being rubbish (and there is lots to moan about – exams are by no means perfect!), at least you can ask what exams are supposed to do, and then test whether or not they actually do what they’re supposed to do. Yes, let’s examine the exams!

Is media studies a ‘soft subject’?

According to the Independent and Guardian newspapers today, a report has backed-up some popular prejudices by showing that an A-level in media studies is easier than one in a ‘proper’ subject like English. Certain subjects, like media studies are therefore dubbed ‘soft’ as opposed to the hard subjects like maths and English.

Of course the report by the QCA says no such thing, it says that A-levels are of roughly similar levels of challenge, but recognises how difficult it is to compare different subjects in terms of difficulty using exam scripts, especially when 40% of the marks in media studies are based on course work, not the final exam.

What critics want, I believe, is to have their cake and eat it! A-levels are supposed to demonstrate what a person has learnt over the 2 years of study, and to allow selectors (employers or universities) to choose between different candidates. However, for the selection process, people want to be able to compare who is ‘better’ and who is ‘worse’ – hence the drive to be able to compare subjects. The idea is that someone with AAB, in any subjects, must be ‘better’ or ‘cleverer’ than someone with CCC, in any subjects. This harks back to Spearman’s concept of g or general intelligence, a sort of intellectual horsepower that is supposed to be at the basis of human ability. Why not just have a single IQ test for everyone taking A-level? Critics want to have different subjects which recognise diversity, but to have homogenous standards of comparison.

But people aren’t that simple – they have different talents, which is the point of having different exam subjects. A-levels are a step up from IQ testing, because they do give people a chance to demonstrate their ability to use their intelligence in an area where they have interest and talent. But does it make sense to say I am better at maths than you are at French? I think that this is really down to snobbery – ‘media studies’ is the new sociology.

Every generation wants to believe that the young people of today are fickle and lazy, so if they get good results, it must be because the exams are easier. Or as Socrates (469–399 B.C.) is supposed to have said (actually he probably didn’t say this, but it’s still a great quote!):

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Oral exams and sloppy thinking on exams

A recent story in the press about a proposal to substitute oral exams for continual assessment in foreign language exams raised a lot of hackles! The trouble with this kind of thing is that people see headlines and opinions, and comment from there, rather than go back to primary sources, and see what is actually being proposed. So I thought it would be useful to see that the original Dearing Report (2007), actually said. And there it was in section 3.22:

We also proposed a new approach to the assessment of speaking and listening, which rightly account for half the marks in the GCSE, on the grounds that the present method is too stressful and too short to be a reliable way of assessing what the candidates can do. It is interesting that when people spoke about the oral test, that however long ago it may have been, it is often remembered as a stressful experience. We therefore proposed that these parts of the examination should be over a period through moderated teacher assessment.

The Dearing report states that oral exams are stressful - well, yes exams are stressful, but the implication here is that they are unnecessarily stressful, and put people off taking language at GCSE and A-level. Secondly it is asserted that they are too short to accurately assess language skills. I haven't read the full report, but from my quick scan, it seems that these assertions are not justified. Research shows that the predictive value of exams rises quite quickly in the first few questions, and that a plateau is quickly reached after which further assessment yields very little new information about the candidate. Are oral exams too short, or do their results correlate well with other measures of linguistic ability? And how do we know that a stressful exam causes people to change their subject choices - it seems plausible, but is it what actually happens?

To my mind the real issue here is sloppy thinking in educational policy, which justifiably wants to encourage more people to study languages, but makes unjustified assertions. This seems to me to post-hoc justification of pre-determined decisions, rather than evidence-based policy making. So in this case the commentary does have something substantive to complain about – but let’s check things out before getting hot under the collars, eh?

It’s Valentine’s Day – love your examiners!

Examiners are a much maligned breed. Along with traffic wardens, and tax inspectors, nobody seems to love them. Well it’s Valentines Day today, so how about giving them a hug?

OK, maybe not literally, but at least metaphorically. When you've struggled to learn your subject, you've revised till you're cross-eyed, and you're sat in front of that awful piece of paper and told to 'Turn over your papers', it's kind of difficult to feel much love, or even charity to the rotten beggars who created the damned thing. However, remember examiners are human (yes, really!), which means that, despite their best efforts, the odd poorly worded question will pop up. But, most exams are designed to be fair, and to give you a chance to show what you know. Examiners are teachers, who by and large, like to see people succeed, not viscous sadists out to torment you.

So, how do you show your love for examiners? Give them a chance to help you out. Follow the instructions on the paper, and answer the right number of questions. Answer the question - there's nothing more frustrating than marking a paper, where it's clear that the student knows about the subject, but you can't award marks because they haven't actually answered the question! Write reasonably legibly, so that a normal human being can read what you've written without an advanced degree in hieroglyphics. And if you're running out of time, write down keywords, phrases or diagrams to show what you know. Give your poor examiners a chance to pass you.

It's Valentine's Day - go on, hug an examiner!

Exam coaching – what’s that then?

Have you ever taken an exam and let yourself down? You had worked hard for the exam – maybe not well, maybe not properly, but you had put the work in. And you failed, or maybe got a grade you knew you didn’t deserve. It seems so unfair, doesn’t it – assessing a whole year (or term or whatever) of work on one or two days performance. Well yeah, in some ways it is. But, and here’s the big but, it’s the system for many people. And it’s probably going to continue to be the system for a long time. So you need to learn how to work with the system, and win!

That’s where the idea of exam coaching came from – I have taught young doctors at undergraduate and post-graduate level for many years. But before that I was on the receiving end for sooooo long – batchelor’s degree, medical degree, post-graduate diplomas. I worked out at one stage that I must have sat at least one hundred ‘official’ exams in my career – MCQ, essays, practical, oral - practically every form of intellectual torture known to man! So, maybe, just maybe, I know a bit about what it takes to pass.

A couple of years ago, I took a change in career, and trained as a hypnotherapist. Loved the training, and loved the job. And guess what? I started seeing people as a hypnotherapist for exam nerves, improving performance etc. And so, I decided to combine the two – my years of experience and knowledge of educational practice and psychology; and the sheer usefulness of hypnosis, NLP and similar techniques.

So what is exam coaching, then? Well it’s a process where I partner up with people preparing for exams, to guide and assist them to maximise their chances of passing. In other words, help them to do themselves justice on the day. Seems like a worthwhile occupation to me, don’t you agree?