Instructors:
Dr. Charles Yokomoto
Dr. Maher Rizkalla
This web site being built to help you improve your performance on exams in typical engineering courses that use problem solving as a method for learning and for testing. Because it is a "work-in-progress," a few of the links may be inactive. We apologize for this inconvenience, but we thought that the benefits of the page far exceed the inconvenience of a few inactive links. The information you will receive from this page is the result of many hours of interviewing and studying successful learners to ascertain what they do in order to perform well on exams. Do any of the following quotes sound as if they described you? If so, you may find parts of this web page useful.
"I knew the material but could not solve the problems on the test."
"I knew how to solve the test problems, but I didn't have enough time."
"I could have solved the problems, but I got nervous and could not think straight."
"As soon as I left the room, I knew how to solve the problems."
"The exam was unfair. I didn't recognize any of the problems."
"The test was nothing like the homework."
"The test was unfair--it was too difficult."
Sometimes, it could, indeed, be as simple as the exam being unfairly difficult. Hopefully, the instructor will take this into consideration when giving final grades, but that is quite another story. Let's work on things that you can control and focus on exams where the exams are fair exams.
Here are some of the probable causes and some information on each one.