How to Study for an IT Certification with a Visual Study Board
Many people who fail an IT exam did not fail from lack of effort. They read a lot, memorised a lot, and still could not tell how the pieces fit when a scenario question changed the wording. A visual study board is built to fix that: it shows how topics connect, turns the map into flashcards and practice questions, and shows your progress on a Treemap. This guide explains how to use one properly.
What a visual study board is (and is not)
A board is a map of one exam. Each exam objective has its own sheet, and each sheet holds cards: a term, a table, a command, a decision diagram. You read the map, recall it with flashcards written from the same cards, prove it on practice questions, and watch a Treemap of your cards turn from red to green.
It is not a hands-on lab or a video course, and it does not promise a pass.
Read, recall, prove, see
1. Scope the exam first
Open the official objectives for your exam version once, so you know the domains and their weights. Heavier domains deserve more of your time. Check that your board follows the same exam version you are booking.
2. Read one sheet at a time
Read a sheet from left to right, starting with its big idea. Look at the whole sheet before the card details: seeing how the cards relate is what turns a list of facts into an understanding. Then answer the sheet's Check yourself cards before you look at their answers.
3. Recall it with flashcards
Rereading makes a sheet feel familiar; recalling it is what makes it stick. Run the sheet's flashcards and grade each one Again, Hard, Good or Easy: it comes back just before you would forget it. A few minutes every day beats one long weekend session. When a card stays hard, find it on the map and read the cards around it.
4. Prove it with practice questions
Practice questions are for finding gaps, not for memorising answers. Take a short test on the sheets you have read, read the explanation of every answer, and go back to the map for each one you missed. A few days later, re-test only the questions you got wrong.
5. See what is left on the Treemap
A card's score comes from its flashcards and practice questions. The Treemap paints every card they cover on one screen, so the red squares tell you what to read next. Keep going until the whole Treemap is green.
Common mistakes
- Memorising without understanding. Exams change the wording of scenarios. If you only recognise a phrase, a new phrase breaks you.
- Skipping the hard domains. The domains you avoid are the ones that fail you, and the Treemap shows them in red.
- Studying for the wrong version. Objectives change between exam versions, and weights move.
- Only rereading. Recall builds memory: flashcards and practice questions, not another read-through.
- Using exam dumps. Leaked exam questions are cheating, and certification bodies ban people for it. Study the material, not stolen questions.
A simple weekly rhythm
| Day | What to do |
|---|---|
| Monday to Thursday | Two or three sheets from the map, then 15 to 20 minutes of flashcards |
| Friday | A short practice test on the week's sheets, reading the explanation of every miss |
| Weekend | Re-test only the questions you got wrong, then pick next week's sheets from the red on the Treemap |
Adjust the pace to your test date, and put the exam date in your calendar before you start.
Where BoardITGuy fits
BoardITGuy makes hand-drawn visual study boards for CompTIA, Cisco, ISC2, ISACA and AWS exams, with the map, flashcards, original practice questions and a Treemap of your progress in one place. Every board has a free preview, so you can try the method before you pay. See the study boards.