Studies and exams — then and now
In December 2026 it will be 25 years since I completed my formal education at IIIT-B and entered the workforce at GE Healthcare. When I graduated the internet was nascent in India, the internet cafes had just started to come up but due to limited bandwidth and speed the usage was mainly emails, browsing few websites and Yahoo messenger! Pool tables were quite popular as a place to hangout and mobile phones were something to flaunt. On the education front, books were still the primary source of knowledge, the college library was the go to place when you wanted to get more details about a concept.
Last year my son entered college for his graduation and I’ve been watching/observing him on how he and his peers study. Availability of the internet, affordability of computing devices and prevalence of online mode of education has obviously brought in big changes in how students now study and prepare for their university examinations.
Some of the key shifts I’ve noticed are, these are no way exhaustive -
- The Internet is the primary source of information and not books — they rely on amalgamated information and don’t tend to follow one prescribed book for a subject. The reference books can change for each topic and they are usually accessed online.
- Short attention span — Like all other information consumption patterns commensurate with the times the students want to learn and grasp a concept quickly. The tenacity and persistence required to pursue a concept’s full understanding seems to be waning down.
- More focus on hands-on or applied skills — The students these days participate in many more projects, hackathons and programming contests (for computer science and allied fields). Earlier the projects were limited to your final year coursework and few students would try to squeeze in another one during the semester break after 6th semester.
- Importance of securing good GPA — Nowadays the GPA is used many times as a filtering criteria for the campus placement drives and that has driven up the need to maintain a good GPA several notches.
Each of the above 4 changes can be delved into deeper to understand the pros/cons and what is driving that change. Here I want to focus on the “books vs internet” and “GPA requirement” aspect. The idea is not to say one approach is better vs another rather it's just to acknowledge how things are different now. I’ve also tried to look at some existing research related to these and see if there is any correlation or impact of these changes on students’ cognitove abilities.
Books vs internet
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The text books or reference books were really the only source of course work back then. Syudentstypically used books with different writers and based on your lecturer or professor’s liking for a certain type of course structure one book or the other would be the reference one. What it did was to provide a good anchor to the students in terms of the flow of the course, the topics or sub-topics to be followed etc. In case of any doubts there always was a fixed place to start looking for answers and that was your text book. Only when it was lacking in some aspect would someone go and look for other books. Here the availability of the books used to be a challenge - libraries had limited copies and purchasing of books for personal usage was not a concept. In such a scenario there was a limitation on how much depth a student can go into if he/she has a question about something.
With internet that’s no longer a concern. The course typically follows a certain book for reference but I’ve observed that students invariably turn to the internet for specific lecture videos, articles etc. There is a plethora of information available from books in print to books published decades ago, research papers, explainers and what not. Everything is available online and now the students face the other problem of too much content being available. I feel they need to anchor on one of the reference books and go online to fulfil any gaps in understanding. For students who are curious this certainly is a time where they can explore the subjects in as much depth as they want and even devise their own ways to complement the classroom studies.
Research — There are published studies that support the scenario that aiding the learning with videos or other online mechanisms of learning typically results in better grasp on the subject for the students. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0034654321990713
This study also points to the positive impact of multimedia on both teaching and learning — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020321551?utm_source=chatgpt.com#sec4
These studies confirm that internet or online tools can really help in addressing specific gaps in understanding of subject.
Importance of GPA -
Now as far as I can remember, a 9+ GPA or a score of 90% was seldom a focus area for us. I still vividly recall the examination pattern of the university exams. Every subject would be divided into 5–6 units and in the question paper you could expect questions worth 20 marks from each unit with the student expected to attempt questions worth 100 marks. Each question paper had 35 as passing marks so theoretically you could pass the exam if you prepare 2 units really really well such that you could solve any question from those units.
A clear pattern could be seen in how the folks used to approach these — Folks who were focused on academics and getting really good marks were typically the ones who would prepare from all units and be ready for any question. These would be typically people who focus on the lectures from the beginning of semester, preparing detailed notes etc.
Another set would be people who would not be so studious but probably can be called as “street smart” tried to maximise their outcome by focusing on specific units — maybe based on which units are stressed more from exam point of view or the ones which constitute the core subject. These folks would equally spend time on social, extra curricular, sports activities and hence the need to optimize the effort for best possible results.
Finally folks who used to typically enjoy the time during the full semester and start studying only when the preparatory leaves for the exams started :), for them again the way to optimally prepare was to focus on 3 units really well and then hope that things fall in place during the exam time.
Research — Again I tried to find if there is some structured research around the learning strategies specially in engineering related education that come out as a common strategy being adopted. There doesn’t seem to be any documented studies around this. The studies focus on the general techniques like reading, highlighting, tests etc. They all highlight that the approach of continuous self-evaluation and monitoring their understanding works well to improve examinsation scores and grades. the student can be in either of the thress categories listed above, the key to good outcome in tests and exams is genuine self-evaluation and addressing the gaps. For crunch situation this can be applied to specific topics where the effort would result in most improvement on the result, a la biggest bang for the buck!!
Conclusion
In conclusion I can say that despite having infinite resources, today’s students face a different challenge — not scarcity of information, but the need for metacognition (knowing how to learn). The GPA pressure only adds to and our role as a parent should be to help them develop self evaluation and assessment techniques.
The best learners today aren’t those with the most information — they’re those who can anchor themselves (pick one reference, set real goals) while staying curious enough to explore online. GPA matters, but it’s a byproduct of understanding, not the goal itself.
While our generation was limited by scarcity; this generation is “limited by abundance”. Both require intentional strategy — just different kinds.
