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Revising AS Level Product Design

I have just recently completed my AS Product Design exam mealy days ago, and I feel that nothing could of went any better. to summarise, I am going to share with you various revision tips which worked perfectly for me, and can be used by you and applied to your revision with great effect.

1. Past papers.
Past papers are essential to any subject's revision, however in Product Design, the wording of the questions are the distinctive feature which makes the exams so difficult. as soon as you finish reading the question (and understand it), be sure to underline the keywords. These words are generally 'Compare' 'Name/state' 'suggest' etc. These key words are quite literally the key to understanding the question, as in if you are to suggest an alternative material for x application, or to compare one design against another.

2. Theory book.
As for PD Materials and Testing (3D), we used the textbook vigorously to revise for the exam. What worked best for me was to memorise the manufacturing processes (Injection moulding etc) and took a break. I then went back after a significant amount of time to try and draw out the fully labelled process fully from memory, to then compare against the original drawing in the book. This will help you feel more confident in recreating the book's contents independently, including the process's pros/cons, labelled parts and stages in the process.

3. Start early.
As you surely know, the shear amount of information contained within the textbooks can be extremely overwhelming, so another great technique is to start revising the textbook months in advance. This particular strategic approach is nothing new, and I'm sure you are encouraged to do it already. However, you may not be fully aware that the shear amount of information needed to be retained for the exam can only truly be remembered if you go back to revise sections at regular intervals. An example of this is after you have revised a section on working with metals, revise another section, but after a chosen amount of time go back and revise the original section. This is the basic principal behind the 'Learning Curve' graph. The Learning Curve states that the ability to retain learned information will decrease over time. To counteract this, you must relearn these things at regular intervals, almost like how you would set about making a subject revision schedule.

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