Study Skills

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Study Skills

• Preparing summaries

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Why summaries?

• Preparation of summaries helps you
• Organise material in a clear and logical manner
• Structure your thoughts and ideas
• Test your understanding of course materials if
  you dont know it you cant summarise it
• Reduce your notes to a form useful for study and
  open book exams
• Learn course materials

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ORGANISE

• You will have assembled a lot of material
  lecture notes, case notes, notes of readings,
  tutorial answers
• Your summaries need to organise this in a way
  which is accessible and useful

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Organisation requires editing

• As you summarise, you should select the most
  important points you need to remember
• These points should be organised around topics,
  or themes, or grouped together with similar
  ideas, in a way which makes sense to you.
• Rewriting your notes is NOT preparing a summary
  you also need to RETHINK your notes

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An organised summary is

• Brief ideally, every topic should be dealt with
  in only one page
• Headings only your summary should be key points
  or headings which remind you of the main material
  to be covered, not a complete restatement of the
  course material
• Supported by relevant authorities
  (cases/legislation)

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STRUCTURE

• Black holes are very dense and full of matter.
• There is so much matter in a black hole that once
  you enter there is no escape.
• A good structure ensures that your summaries do
  not become black holes.

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A good structure

• May be different for every person as we all
  think differently.
• Should be able to work as an essay plan, or a
  check list to make sure you spot and discuss all
  relevant issues raised in a question
• Should be structured logically and supported by
  relevant material

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A good structure

• Will use headings and dot points
• Wont use so much information that the reader
  gets lost in the detail
• May cross reference to other summaries if ideas
  overlap, or you want to link to related remedies

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Examples Legal Institutions

• Legal Institutions is a thematic course with a
  spiralling curriculum which looks at a number of
  issues and concepts. One useful structure would
  be to prepare a glossary of terms and concepts
  commonly encountered in lectures and in your
  reading. Attempting a one sentence explanation
  for each of the concepts listed on the next slide
  (and others you may add) is a useful approach.

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Concept glossary

• Bicameral Legislature
• Concurrent power/exclusive power
• Constitutional Monarchy
• Democracy
• Division of powers
• Federation
• Independence of the Judiciary

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Concept glossary

• Manner and Form provisions
• Parliamentary sovereignty
• Plenary power
• Repugnancy (of Colonial laws)
• Representative government
• Responsible government
• Rule of law

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Concept glossary

• Separation of powers
• Judicial Power
• Judicial Power of the Commonwealth
• Executive
• Legislature
• s15AA/s15AB
• Ambiguous

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Other LI structures

• You could also consider using
• The course outline as the structure for your
  summaries
• The powerpoints construct a summary around the
  issues noted in the powerpoints
• A time-line especially useful for the
  historical material and highlighting the
  important developments over time

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UNDERSTANDING

• A key purpose of summary preparation is for you
  to check you have understood the course material.
• The process of summarising should expose gaps in
  your understanding and give you the opportunity
  to fix them, before the examiner also looks for
  any lack of understanding.

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Summaries of summaries

• Because summarising is a process of building
  understanding rather than just rewriting notes,
  the best exam summaries are often summaries of
  summaries.
• Preparing summaries is not a one-step process.

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How to?

• Start by reviewing (and if necessary rewriting)
  your lecture notes, case notes and the notes of
  other readings from texts or other sources.
• Make sure your lecture notes are complete and
  that you have read enough to understand the
  material covered in each lecture.
• Your lecture notes are the best basis for your
  summary preparation.

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Understand what you summarise

• For some people reading the text or other
  recommended reading will be sufficient to
  understand the lecture material. Others may have
  to go wider to other sources to build their
  understanding.
• Ask questions, read widely, do whatever it takes
  to make sure you understand the material.
• You need to summarise your knowledge, not your
  ignorance.

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Self preparation

• Because summaries are prepared so that you can
  check your understanding and to help you
  demonstrate that understanding in an exam, the
  best summaries are self prepared made for you,
  by you. Every summary may look different, but be
  equally useful to the person who prepared it.

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REDUCE

• Once you understand the material, then you can
  reduce it into a usable summary.
• Summary preparation is a process of distilling
  down lecture notes, case notes and readings into
  a very abbreviated summary, which reminds you of
  the key points at a glance.

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LEARN

• Now your summaries are ready, the last step is to
  learn them.
• Writing the summary is only part of the process
• You must also know what is in the summary, so you
  can use it in the exam (and in practice.)

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Aide memoire

• A summary is an aide memoire
• The purpose of a summary is to remind you of the
  law you already know
• Summaries cannot teach you law in exam conditions
  with which you are not already familiar.

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Other ideas for summaries

• As you review questions from past papers or work
  through examples in class or in tutorials you may
  notice that certain phrases always indicate
  certain issues make a summary of these for the
  exam.

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RECAP

• When you summarise, you organise your lecture
  material and other readings.
• This process of organisation will help you
  approach questions in an organised way, and
  provide a well organised answer to any question

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Avoid Black Holes

• A summary which is a complete rewrite of the text
  book and all your lecture notes is a black hole
  - it will suck up all your time and energy and
  give you nothing back.
• Summaries should be brief, cover only the main
  points and be a rethink not a rewrite

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Understand before you summarise

• The process of preparing a summary will help you
  learn, if you check and develop your
  understanding along the way.
• If your summaries are nothing more than rewrites
  of material you do not understand then they are
  not learning tools but exercises in penmanship.
• You need to rethink for a summary, not simply
  rewrite.

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REDUCE
A good summary is short, and to the
point. Remember, you are preparing notes for an
exam not for a 50,000 word thesis
LEARN
You need to know what is in your summary. Write
it yourself, learn it, and rely on it as a
checklist and aide memoire in the exam. A summary
is a powerful tool for open book exam success.
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Study Skills

• Approaching Open Book Exams

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Before you start writing

• Set up a time schedule
• Read through the whole exam paper once
• Think before you write

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Writing and answering

• Get right to the point
• Develop your argument
• Aim for compactness, completeness and clarity
• Summarize in your last paragraph

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Review (if time available)

• Complete questions left incomplete
• Review, edit correct

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Run out of time?

• Out line what you would have said

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OPEN BOOK TESTS

• In an open book exam you are evaluated on
  understanding rather than recall and memorization
• You will be expected to
• Apply material to new situations
• Analyze elements and relationships
• Synthesize, or structure
• Evaluate using your material as evidence

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Open book exams

• Do not underestimate the preparation needed for
  an open book exam your time will be limited, so
  the key is proper organization in order to
  quickly find data, quotes, examples, and/or
  arguments you use in your answers.

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What not to bring

• Open book exams generally allow any
  non-electronic materials in the exam room (but
  always check the details first.)
• What will you bring?
• Selection of materials is the key to success
• Why bring the whole library when you will have
  neither time nor room to use it.

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A Good Answer

• Reads and responds to the question carefully
• Isolates all relevant issues
• Is clearly structured
• Is well supported
• Provides sufficient detail to answer the question