Actually, it really isn't any different than studying the material
It can be a bit different, since studying actual exam questions leads to more rote memorization than knowing and applying said knowledge.
I took some of those Cisco Academy courses and the stuff my professor highlighted throughout still left gaps in some of the minutia they expect you to memorize for the exams that you probably wouldn't have bothered covering as extensively as some of the other topics.
I've noticed the same with the CompTIA exams and the one Microsoft MCTS exam that I've taken as well. I read and studied using the official texts and they expect you to regurgitate a lot of little trivia that most people would probably just refer to a chart or book for at some point.
