The Top 10 Digital Study Tools for Exam Season

Tools for Studying Efficiently and Effectively 

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GitMind (PC and Mobile Application)
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GitMind is a mind mapping tool for bringing your “inner universe” to life. You can begin to visualise ideas, concepts and their connections using text, images, hyperlinks and icons. This tool makes it easy to customise your mind maps with colours, present your expanding ideas to others with transitions, and switch between mind map and outline modes. Beyond mind maps, this tool also supports the creation flowcharts, organisational charts and a wide variety of diagrams. GitMind can make it easy to implement active recall style revision and learning techniques. You could use this tool to scope your subject, or memorise essays as mentioned in the essay memorisation framework. 

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NeuroCache (Android and IOS App)
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NeuroCache is your “long-term memory assistant” that makes implementing active recall and spaced repetition easy. Active recall is a learning principle for memorising information effectively, encouraging you to bring information to mind without looking back at notes or prompts. This technique is often paired with spaced repetition, a timeframe that predicts when you’re likely to forget something and should recall it to strengthen your memory. NeuroCache makes using these two techniques seamless by integrating with your note-taking applications such Notion, Evernote, OneNote, and even markdown files or tweets. From your note-taking applications, you can define flashcards that you can continue to review and recall with their spaced repetition algorithms. 

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Genei (Web Application)
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Genei is an AI-powered research tool that automatically summarises your reading material. You can work through and organise your reading list using folders, sub-folders, and track your progress by marking things as read or unread. This tool provides more than powerful summarisation, making it easy to research effectively with note-taking and annotation features. These capabilities are perfect for compiling revision material, especially for your active recall flashcards or notes. Your AI-powered summaries can be inserted into genei notepad, and easily transferred to other note-taking or flashcard tools. 

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UniMate (Android and IOS App)
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UniMate is a grade calculator app for university students. Planning in advance is one of the best ways to manage your stress during exam season. This app makes it simple to track your grades across modules, and see your upcoming deadlines. The best part is UniMate will calculate your grade average for you, making it easy to see how you’re progressing during the year and throughout your degree. If you’re worried about whether or not you’re on track, there’s also a feature for calculating the predicted grades you need to achieve your dream degree classification. 

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Tools for Planning and Managing Tasks

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Shovel (Mobile and Web Application)
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Shovel is a planner designed for students that prioritises time-boxing, a technique for scheduling tasks for a fixed time into your calendar. This app combines your calendar and to-do list to make timeboxing easy, and integrates with your academic platforms and other calendars to make importing tasks and events seamless. Outline your schedule with events, and then slot in your tasks that already have an assigned duration into your free time. Shovel makes it simple to work around your events, and re-plan tasks if things change. This way, both your scheduled events, and important to-dos are accounted for, allowing you to have peace of mind that you’re on track. 

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Google Calendar (Mobile and Web Application)
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Google Calendar (gcal) is a classic but powerful tool for organising your life, tasks and goals. Similar to Shovel, gcal has a feature called Google Tasks that makes it easy to view your schedule and to-do’s side by side. If your to-do items have due dates, you can enable the Tasks calendar to view these directly in your schedule. The flexibility of gcal makes it the ideal tools for also implementing time management techniques such as time-blocking or tracking habits and goals. You can switch between various calendars, making it easy to focus on one area of your studies at a time. If you enjoy being able to have a curated and visually pleasing schedule, you can customise your gcal in a variety of ways, and enable different settings for your liking. 

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MyStudyLife (Android and IOS App)
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MyStudyLife is a planner app designed for the intricacies of academic life, allowing you to keep track of classes, exams, and tasks. You can use their scheduling features to manage your academic calendar and keep note of your classes, deadlines, and holidays. This app understands how the academic year works and makes it easy to pause classes if it’s holiday time, and manage your studies as they change per term. The to-do list feature is also tailored to your academic needs, allowing you to assign tasks as an ‘assignment’, ‘revision’ or ‘reminder’. You can track your progress on to-do list items, making it intuitive to account for assignments that require multiple sessions. To bring things together, there’s overview and reminder features that give you your to-do list and schedule at a glance, and send you notifications so you never forget what’s coming up next. 

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Owaves (IOS App, Android App Coming Soon)
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Owaves is a holistic calendar that encourages a focus on wellness using eight categories: love, move, work, eat, sleep, relax, play and flow. It’s important to find the balance between academic life and self-care to avoid burnout, and Owaves makes this easy to prioritise within your day. In the app, your time can be visualised as a circle, where you make time for each category of items. You can implement routines and schedules that make it easier to plan ahead. Using their homescreen widget, you see a circle of time for the task you’re supposed to be working on, and which task is coming up next. There’s even the ability to track your progress in each category, making it easier to reflect on all areas of life. This visual approach allows you to plan your ideal day, making time for wellness, love, and play while getting things done in a way that is structured and well scheduled. 

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Tools for Time Management 

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Session (IOS App)
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Session is a timer app that allows you to time your activities and track your progress. You can manually log how much time you spend on a particular activity, and view at a glance how much time you have dedicated to each. This is ideal for tracking time spent across modules, or long term focuses, such as exams or a dissertation. You can view each activity, and a history of your sessions using their simple interface. Sessions are an ideal way to log progress towards your goals, and reflect on how much time you dedicate to each activity or goal. This is perfect if you have a busy schedule, and prefer to work with flexible timing. You can work without a strict routine but still have enough information and insight to reflect on your progress. 

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Flipd (Android and IOS App)
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Flipd is a time tracking app that encourages a community of productivity by allowing you to work in live public study rooms. You can set customisable timers for solo or group tasks, which are organisable using tags and colours. Timers can also be allocated to specific goals, and you can track your progress using your stats across days, weeks, and months, alongside achieving milestone badges. Flipd makes it easier to hold yourself accountable, or share accountability with others through public and private study groups. If you struggle with motivation for your studies, this is an ideal tool for feeling part of a community, and working towards your goals.