Hi, and welcome to the course. I'm your instructor, Dr. Mitchell schwindt. And this is test taking strategies for success. And so first, just a warm welcome and thank you for enrolling in this course. And I want to tell you a little bit about me and why you might gain some valuable insights from one with a teacher. I'm a board certified emergency physician, and I've been practicing for about 15 years.

But that's not really why I'm teaching this course. For the last decade, I've been working with a variety of undergraduate students and professional students to help them improve their academic achievements. I've worked with undergraduate students, pre med students, med students and pre dental students as well. And so I've been teaching some manner of this course for the last 10 plus years and have also been also published a book on this that's been selling on Amazon for the last year or so and my husband met with quite a bit of success. And so I have obviously taken a fair number of tests myself to get through medical school, but the other side of the coin is For the last four or five years, I've been writing high level questions for mostly medical students and other physicians in training at an advanced level, and so I know a lot of tick, the tricks, the tips, the inside world of question writing, having worked with other question writers, there's really sort of a methodology.

A lot of us use to generate high level questions, and I'm going to share that with you. They're awesome. Also some rules that test writers are supposed to follow, not that they always necessarily do, but we'll get into that and how that can help you. When you're really stumped or struggling or just really taking a shot in the dark about a question you don't know anything about. But this course isn't about me. It's actually about you.

And obviously, you're here because you want to improve at x and whatever x is, it doesn't really matter. The reality is that all of us are going to be taking tests throughout our lives, to get through college through high school, maybe move on to grad school, law school, med school, whatever. But after that, it doesn't end if you're an insurance salesman, if you're an investment advisor, there are additional tests that you're gonna have to take throughout your professional career. And what I'm going to teach in this course is applicable across the entire spectrum. And so you'll be able to take a lot of this information with you and apply it throughout your life. And so, the why obviously, you're here because you want to improve, and I'm going to help you do that.

Students have been helping have met tremendous success. And I'm going to share with you how to do that, how to go about answering questions, and how to get the most from your study efforts. So if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. There's a question or forum section here. Just post your question there. And I'll get back to you and I hope to foster some interaction between students.

Obviously, we all have our own tips and techniques and methods of success and get to learn from each other. I don't want you to view this as a competition between each other. I mean, certainly some programs are very competitive to get into physical therapy, nursing med school, etc. But the reality is we can all learn from each other and grow. And the competition is actually within yourself you want to make today and tomorrow, a better day more successful than the previous day. And this course will help you do that.

And so don't hesitate to ask any questions. Previously, I'd shared my personal email, but I found that students were more often than not posting questions via email instead of the forum. And it really kind of limited some of the learning of group learning that can be accomplished by by group sharing. And so let's just keep them all in the forum and, and share and learn and grow. The goals of this course. I'm going to give you the academic skills you need to be successful at test taking.

I'm going to teach you how to do that. What this course is not is it's not a study course. It's not how to study. It's not how to sleep. It's not how to avoid anxiety and test panic. Certainly those things are important and we'll touch on them.

But this course is focused mostly on dissecting questions. Getting Inside the Mind of your teacher, your professor inside of the exam writer, and really figuring out what they're asking. And even if you don't have any idea what the answer is, or even don't even know the subject matter. The techniques and tips that you learn in this course can help you answer all those questions successfully. I hope to provide a fun and supportive environment through the forum through interaction. We'll be adding additional content periodically.

And so the overall goal is obviously to help you answer questions. And then the difference between A and a B or a C and D are really often comes down to a point or two. And if you can apply the techniques that I'm going to teach you, you'll be met with success. And so don't let your study efforts and your preparatory work, go to waste just to fall down and miss a question or two and not get the grade you you desire or you need and I'm also going to teach you the physiology of success. There are some sound principles based in math. And science and the physiology of test taking and learning and we'll talk about that in detail.

Some of that will be the applicable to studying as well. So an overview we're doing the intro right now, we'll get into the physiology of test taking and also how it applies to studying and retention of facts and knowledge. We'll talk about some of the myths of test taking and question answering. And then we'll really dig into the reality help you get inside the mind of your teacher, your professor of the exam question writer and really understand what they're asking or what they're looking for. There are some specific nuances and key facts that once you learn, you'll really have a pretty sound idea of what the lecture is going to ask and what they what they want, what they're looking for. We'll talk about the variety of question types.

There are certain specific question types and once you once you recognize the outline the structure of the question, you have a pretty good idea of which direction to go and be able to eliminate several answers and improve your chances. Picking the correct answer significantly. And then we'll wrap it up with a recap, we'll help you recall and assimilate the data, the facts, the techniques and strategies that I presented in this course, so that you can apply it immediately and take it with you in the future. And so with that, let's get started.