A cheat sheet (also ''cheatsheet'') or crib sheet is a concise set of notes used for quick reference. Cheat sheets were historically used by
student
A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution.
In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementar ...
s without an instructor or teacher's knowledge to
cheat
Cheating generally describes various actions designed to subvert rules in order to obtain unfair advantages. This includes acts of bribery, cronyism and nepotism in any situation where individuals are given preference using inappropriate cr ...
on a
test or exam. In the context of higher education or vocational training, where
rote memorization
Rote learning is a memorization technique based on repetition. The method rests on the premise that the recall of repeated material becomes faster the more one repeats it. Some of the alternatives to rote learning include meaningful learning, ...
is not as important, students may be permitted (or even encouraged) to develop and consult their own cheat sheets during exams. The act of preparing such reference notes can be an educational exercise in itself, in which case students may be restricted to using only those reference notes they have developed themselves. Some universities publish guidelines for the creation of cheat sheets.
As reference cards
In more general usage, a crib sheet is any short (one- or two-page) reference to terms, commands, or symbols where the user is expected to understand the use of such terms but not necessarily to have memorized all of them. Many computer applications, for example, have crib sheets included in their documentation, which list keystrokes or menu commands needed to achieve specific tasks to save the user the effort of digging through an entire manual to find the keystroke needed to, for example, move between two windows. An example of such a crib sheet is one for the
GIMP
GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...
photo editing software.
See also
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Academic dishonesty
Academic dishonesty, academic misconduct, academic fraud and academic integrity are related concepts that refer to various actions on the part of students that go against the expected norms of a school, university or other learning institution. D ...
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Reference card
A reference card or reference sheet (or quick reference card) or crib sheet is a concise bundling of condensed notes about a specific topic, such as mathematical formulas to calculate area/volume, or common syntactic rules and idioms of a particula ...
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cheat Sheet
Cheating in school
Computer programming
Educational materials
School examinations