While it is easy to dwell on the mark or grade in front of you, it is important to remember that this mark—whether it is something you are proud of or not—is a snapshot of your ability to perform with one set of questions at a fixed point in time. Doing well or doing poorly on any given assessment is not a judgement on your character or your intelligence. Reflecting on how you did is where real character and intelligence can shine.
Honest and intentional reflection provides the opportunity to move your learning forward if you:
- identify areas in which you are secure;
- identify areas which need development;
- build your understanding of question structure and requirements.
This is not a post-mortem. You are not dead. This is a chance to identify the need and plan for corrective action by understanding where marks were gained or lost.
Focus on yourself
This is a process for you and you alone. There is nothing to be gained from comparing your performance to others—and much to be lost. Asking other students how they did might feed your ego but it might also make them feel worse.
We generally respond emotionally to grades, interpreting them as judgements on our character. We can only move our learning forward when we accept that our grade is not a terminal judgement and we look beyond our initial emotional reaction. Feel happy, or sad, or angry, or however you feel in the moment. But don’t let that feeling consume you. Productive reflection demands an objective eye and emotions can cloud your vision.
Identify secure areas
Questions you perform well on should be celebrated. By identifying the topics and styles of questions you succeed at, you can:
- prioritise revision for future assessments;
- adapt successful approaches to other questions.
While revision for final examinations should be comprehensive, it would be foolish to spend hours on topics you have recently demonstrated secure knowledge of. It would also be foolish to omit such topics from your revision plans—they should be included, but they should not dominate. A realistic picture of your understanding allows you to intentionally plan effective revision.
Think hard about what went well on successful questions, particularly if you got full marks. What about your answer enabled you to succeed?
Did you…
- identify and understand the command word?
- intentionally consider the number of marks available when writing your answer?
- revise the topic effectively? (if so, what was effective about it?)
- intentionally show all your workings for calculations?
- evidence application of knowledge to the question’s scenario?
- communicate your knowledge accurately?
- demonstrate correct programming syntax?
- plan the logic of your programs before writing them?
If you can explain why your answer was successful, you can make comparisons between your successful and less successful responses. What did you do in your successful responses that you didn’t do elsewhere?
If you did well on the entire assessment, congratulations! You should bear in mind, however, that secure knowledge today does not mean secure knowledge forever. Think hard about the behaviours that led you to this point: your engagement in lessons, your approach to homework, your revision strategies. How have they served you well? Are they sustainable long-term?
Identify areas for development
Many things can go wrong in assessments. You might make a ‘silly mistake,’ or misunderstand a question. Perhaps you didn’t revise enough—or at all.
External factors are worth acknowledging, too. Your emotional state, sleep, and diet can all have a significant impact on your performance on any given day. This is not to make excuses but to reflect honestly on why things happened the way they did.
The purpose of identifying ‘what went wrong’ is not to make you feel guilty or stupid or lazy. The point is to be honest and think hard about things you can do differently next time. There is no point memorising the answers to this assessment’s questions, as you likely won’t see them again, so think big picture.
If you do poorly on the entire assessment, it can be extremely demotivating. The easiest response is to opt out of thinking hard and either dismiss the assessment as unimportant or externalise the blame. The best thing to do in this situation is to accept the challenge and lock in to the reflection process.
Silly mistakes
‘Silly mistake’ is often a euphemism for a mistake in the execution of your answer. These mistakes usually happen due to lack of care or lack of secure understanding. Don’t be too quick to dismiss a mistake as ‘silly’. Dismissing a mistake as ‘silly’ can minimise it and deny you the opportunity for helpful reflection.
If you made a mistake due to lack of care, why?
- Were you rushed for time?
- Did you rush an answer to avoid confronting the fact your knowledge is not as secure as you thought it was?
- Did the stress of the assessment environment cloud your thinking?
- Could you have taken greater care?
If you made a mistake due to lack of secure understanding, what can you do about it to avoid making the same mistake again? How can you secure your understanding?
Misunderstood questions
Exam questions give lots of clues about the kinds of answers they want. It can be easy to ignore these clues and write an answer to a question that doesn’t exist.
Did you…
- identify and underline all the question’s command words?
- identify and consider the question’s scenario?
- identify the number of marks available and think about how they relate to the command words?
- misread or misunderstand the topic the question is about?
Even with perfect knowledge it is possible to fail at the steps described above. Taking care to read the question carefully can improve your chance at success in the future. This is a skill you can practice. There is unfortunately little you can do to mitigate misunderstanding the assessed topic being beyond comprehensive revision.
Lack of revision
Rather than falling back on the easy solution to ‘revise more,’ dig deeper.
- What specific topics do you need to revise?
- What is their relative priority?
- What was effective or ineffective about the revision you did?
- Why did it not prepare you to answer all the questions in the assessment?
- How much time did you spend revising?
- When did you start?
- Why was this not enough?
Move forwards
Now that you have identified things you did well and things you need to improve upon, you must consider the way forwards.
Before you consider writing targets, take a step back and look at your reflections as a whole. Consider your reflections on this assessment in relation to your reflections on previous assessments. Do you consistently do the same thing well? Do you consistently trip up on similar questions? Identifying patterns will help you in the next stage of the process.
You now need to turn your reflections into actionable targets that you can execute before your next assessment.
Your targets should be chosen with great care: what will have the greatest impact in the shortest time? These targets should not be contrived. There is no point saying “I will spend 1 hour every day using Smart Revise following a revision schedule” as this is not realistic (and also leaves the revision schedule unspecified). The point of creating targets is not to make your teachers happy but to provide you with actions to move your learning forward.
The most helpful targets are SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time-limited
Once the target is written, you need to hold yourself accountable to it. Maybe set a reminder in your phone on the day you say the target should be completed by, or mark the deadline on your calendar. Be wary of telling everyone your target as this can trick your brain into rewarding you in the same way it would if the target were actually achieved.
Example targets
No revision
A student who didn’t do any revision might write a target like this:
Using the list of previous topics, create a structured revision schedule for the next month. I will prioritise topics I did poorly on, e.g., Python syntax and CISC vs RISC. I will make the revision schedule this weekend (1–2/02/26) and it will include topic headers to revise for 20 minutes each day of the month (with a break at weekends).
Poor sleep
A student who was extremely tired on the day of the assessment might write a target like this:
Start fixing my sleep schedule. Over the next two weeks, I will make sure I wake up at the same time every morning (06:50). I will go to bed when I start to feel tired and avoid using screens from 21:00 onwards each night.
Careless mistakes
A student who knows the content well but consistently makes careless mistakes when answering questions might write a target like this:
In the next assessment I will underline every command word in every question. I will intentionally note the number of marks available and write bullet points for each question where each bullet point is one mark available. I will practice doing this with two exam questions every Saturday.