🧠 AI Ed Wiki

📄 Research Article

Make or Take: How Students Navigate Self-Created and Instructor-Provided Cheat Sheets

● high · 2026-07-28assessment, metacognition, self-regulated-learning, higher-ed

Chen, Sakhnini and Istead run a three-wave longitudinal study in a senior software-requirements course where students could use instructor-provided or self-created cheat sheets in exams. Choices were shaped by trust in instructor expertise, desire for personalization, and preparation efficiency, and shifted over time. The make-vs-take decision is fundamentally a Metacognition and Self Regulated Learning question — creating a cheat sheet is itself a generative study strategy — with direct implications for exam design in Authentic Assessment, for optimizing preparation such as Adaptive Pretesting Retention, and for cognitive-structure views of exams like Learnopt Exam Cognitive Structure. It also frames the trade-off AI raises: offloading artifact creation versus learning through creation, cf. Cognitive Offloading Speedup Illusion.

Connected Concepts

  • Metacognition
  • Self Regulated Learning

    • Connected Articles

  • Authentic Assessment
  • Adaptive Pretesting Retention
  • Learnopt Exam Cognitive Structure
  • Cognitive Offloading Speedup Illusion

    • Citation

    Helen Weixu Chen, Victoria Sakhnini, Lesley Istead (2026). Make or Take: How Students Navigate Self-Created and Instructor-Provided Cheat Sheets. arXiv:2607.24736.