Should Professors Provide Study Guides?

“Class will be cancelled” is arguably one of the greatest things to hear in college, right after to “the exam study guide will be posted on Blackboard tonight for the exam,” and “attendance isn’t mandatory.”  

The sigh of relief students let out when professors announce there will be a review sheet for an exam could propel sailboats across the Atlantic. If it’s not the sigh of relief that sends those sailboats, then it’s the overwhelming wave of excitement that protrudes from each student and floods the room.  

Study guides narrow down all the content of the exam and they ease the nauseating anxiety of being blind-sided by the term we swear we’ve never heard the professor mention.

(When, in reality, the professor definitely said it in class when we weren’t paying attention ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

With all the work piling up on a day to day basis, it’s hard to find time to manage the work for each class equally while at the same time maintaining your mental sanity.

Most students don’t have the patience or the time to sit down and read forty-three pages of a textbook about ethics or a ten-page article about economics when we have a lab report due on Monday, a paper due next week, etc.

To cut back time, we skim those readings on Blackboard or simply ignore them. Thus, setting up the possibility for us to miss important concepts and terms that we need to learn.

Review guides that outline the basic information help students break-down the lengthy outside readings.

They also help us sort through the seemingly never-ending lecture notes into a less stressful night of studying.    

If professors allow it, study guides are also helpful when classmates get together and discuss the content on it. I find that when I’m studying, talking out loud to myself helps me remember and understand terms. Studying with classmates is an even better approach to studying and having a review sheet from the professor helps create a “baseline” for study group discussions.  

It’s hard to say whether or not all students do better when professors gives out a review guide, but from personal experience of just this past week, review guides can be lifesavers.

Just out of curiosity while writing this, I asked my two roommates, one of which is pursuing a masters in education, “Do you find study guides from professors for exams to be helpful?” Both of them, without hesitation, said yes.

Should professors provide study guides? In my opinion, from past successes with study guides, I think they should.