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Redefining revision as continual practice

Online mock exams

Smart Revise can be used to simulate a real exam, albeit online. As a great alternative to Exam Builder, Exam Pro and other mock exam creation tools, Smart Revise has it's own bank of questions written by experienced teachers and examiners that cannot be found anywhere else.

Smart Revise automatically chooses the questions based on the paramters set by the teacher, without the need for teachers to build the paper for themselves.

Students complete the exam online. This can be marked by the teacher, self-assessed, peer marked or most questions allow for AI marking too. Results are recorded automatically in the mark book.

Key requirements to simulate a mock exam

  • The number and style of questions can be chosen to exactly match a real exam experience.
  • A time can be set for when a task ends, automatically submitting the work for marking, regardless of whether the student has finished.

The research

The testing effect is a well-known concept referring to gains in learning and retention that can occur when students take a practice test on studied material before taking a final test on the same material.

Research demonstrates that students who take practice tests often outperform students in nontesting learning conditions such as restudying, practice, filler activities, or no presentation of the material. Results reveal that practice tests are more beneficial for learning than restudying.


Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659–701

Setting the task experience to match a real exam

  • Topics: Select multiple topics for one unit only.

For example, in OCR J277 topics for paper 1 start with a 1, and topics for paper 2 start with a 2.

  • Experience: set appropriate to the exam board requirements.

For example an OCR J277 Computer Science component one includes multiple choice, medium answer and just one extended response 8 mark question. The paper is 1 hour, 30 minutes. Typically you may configure the task as follows:

Mock Exam

Note the task content screen adapts to the subject. The screen shown is for OCR Computer Science J277. There will be a different screen for Business to reflect that course.

An OCR J277 Computer Science component two includes multiple choice, medium answer and just one 6 mark algorithm question. The paper is 1 hour, 30 minutes.

  • Questions: Reduce workload by accepting the default questions chosen. They will be presented in order of topics in an appropriate journey for the student through the paper.
  • Schedule: Choose a deadline enforced task that will automatically submit the task at the deadline, simulating the end of the time for the exam.

Supporting SEND

Students and teachers can change their account settings to a cream or lilac theme. This is great for supporting dyslexia by removing the white background making the text easier to read.

One of the advantages of an online system like Smart Revise is that it is easy to use the built-in features of the operating system and browser for accessibility. If students use Smart Revise on an iPad they can use text-to-speech to highlight any text to have it read to them. By using the microphone option students can also dictate their answers. Text input boxes in Smart Revise also facilitate spell checking in supported browsers. These features effectively remove the literacy barrier.

A student can also use Zoom controls to make the text size bigger. Smart Revise has an adaptive design to facilitate this.