Presented By: Alex Stanton, Kansas State University
Co-Authors: Cheryl Boyer, Kansas State University
Ross Braun, Kansas State University
Cody Domenghini, Kansas State University
Steve Keeley, Kansas State University

Understanding how students learn is critical to providing a well-rounded education and assessment through exams has been the best way to measure how much information a student has consumed, processed, and retained. In recent years, higher education has been forced to change due to innovations in technology, increasing costs, and a world pandemic. This has changed how students learn, how they retain information, and how they study for testing. While authorized cheat sheets (e.g. crib cards, note cards, condensed notecards, etc.) have been in the classroom for nearly 75 years, little recent research has been done on their efficacy, impacts on student test scores, or their self-reported stress levels (i.e., testing anxiety) in horticultural classrooms. Therefore, our objectives were to investigate how crib cards impacted student study habits, self-reported stress levels, and test scores when compared to non-crib card tests. For the Spring 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters, students in Basic Turfgrass Culture (HORT 515) at Kansas State University were allowed to use crib cards on four of their eight tests (i.e., quizzes or exams) throughout the semester. Over 88% of students in the Spring 2023 course reported that the crib cards were helpful in reinforcing/remembering material and crib cards helped them organize their thoughts before the test. When asked for feedback at the end of the semester, many students reported that the crib cards, “help[ed] motivate me to study” and assisted them in creating a, “ plan for what [they] didn't know” before the tests and some reported that they found themselves rarely using the crib cards during the tests because of the extra preparation.