Something students always find useful are materials within a book they can use to test themselves. This is usually the case in science textbooks (maths, physics etc.), but not so often in my course. I remember having multiple choice questions and short answers questions in my book for Human Physiology in my first year and in Andy Field’s Discovering Statistics, but both of these courses are sciences. I couldn’t say the same for other psychology books and that is what I think authors/publishers should add.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my revision is mainly based on lectures. I would watch lectures and take notes and then revise from my notes. What I always loved was some sort of self-assessment questions so that I would get a feeling of which topics I’ve learnt properly and what I need to work on a bit more. Andy’s book gives you access to  MCQs on the companion website (Sagepub) and that’s really helpful, he mentioned that in our lectures and even encouraged us to use it.

Not many exams in Psychology are MCQs, they are usually essays. For books on those modules, I would suggest possible essay questions on certain topics/chapters with answers that would either be a sample essay or just an explanation on the structure and approach to writing it. I guess you could argue that different universities have different assessment types but are using the same book. In that case, you could create companion websites separate for universities so that students could prepare better.

In short, whenever I get a chance to test my knowledge I will take it. Unfortunately it’s really hard to come across additional resources or companion websites, maybe because they don’t exist or maybe because no one tells us (students) where to get it. In addition, if you have MCQs for a topic, please make an app. It would be easier to access and more user-friendly that websites.