Does highlighting information in your exams help you get marks?
Students LOVE highlighters! (I do too, I love stationery!)
We have developed the habit of highlighting (or underlining) information thinking that it’s going to help us learn and get more marks. We feel that it’s ‘active reading’.
Take a look at this video and think about this
Passive learning has it’s place in our studies, don’t get me wrong. But you need to think about your objective, and definitely about your time limitations, when it comes to studying and writing exams.
Active reading is about consciously identifying what the information means to you, not just colouring it in!
I also wrote an article on how to get the more value out of your tagging and highlighting in open book exams
