I hate grades. I wish we could do away with them entirely. I don't think they're important in the slightest. What I think is important is conveying material to the student I think is important, and having them care about it. What grades do is make students care about scores instead of information; their questions are about test content instead of about concepts and understanding.
But I understand why we have them. Sort of. At least, I understand that we DO have them, and there's not a whole lot I can do about that. I try to discourage my students from asking the "will this be on the exam?" questions, but it's not their fault, really. It's the system's fault. As long as they are evaluated heavily on their grades (e.g., for graduate school), of course they're going to worry about them.
Ok, rant over. The next question is, what's the best way to actually test knowledge, assuming that this is the point of testing? I'm pretty sure it isn't multiple-choice exams, although I fully understand why we use those. When I used to work at a Big Girl University with hundreds of students in my classes, anything else would've been crazytalk. But now I'm at a little private college and I can do essays without too much difficulty. This seems better. Right?
I just gave an all-essay exam. I always ask for anonymous feedback on the exams from the students, to see how difficult and how fair they felt the exams were (interesting side note: over years of collecting this data, the correlation between perception of fairness and perception of difficulty is r = -0.41... a relatively strong correlation indicating that the easier students find the test, the "fairer" they will rate it. I try to tell them that an easy test might be unfair, and or that a fair test can be quite difficult, but this never sinks in). In any case, I got a lot of comments on this exam that it would've been fairer if I gave them the essay questions in advance (I gave them 5 and let them choose 3).
I know lots of profs do this. I've even seen a few people on here talk about doing something like this. I'm not sure where I stand and need a push in some direction. My current thinking is that, no - I shouldn't give them a heads-up. Telling students to memorize 3 things and then testing them on those 3 things doesn't seem as though it really serves learning so much as short-term cognitive loading. They always complain that they don't know what to study from the notes, but when I was an undergrad, that just meant I studied ALL my notes. That way, I learned everything. Which was the idea, really. Otherwise, maybe I only ought to lecture on those 3 things, if that's all I want them to learn. Right? Or not?
So what do you think? How much direction do you give your students before an exam? Do you give study guides (I don't)? Do you tell them in advance which essays they're going to get? Theoretically, would that be different from giving them a mulitple choice exam to look at in advance, and then asking them, say, 60% of those questions? Is any of this in the service of actual learning?? Or just test-taking? What is the answer to my pedagogical dilemma??!?!
Save me please,
Callie
The problem I see with students getting all the "help" they desire prior to an exam is exactly what you said, they "study" to take a test, not to learn. At some point, this attitude will need to change or the entire system will crumble.
ReplyDeleteI'm another that gets called "unfair" because hold students to the same standards to which I was held. I realize that it's almost as futile as emptying the ocean with a teaspoon, but behaviour modification needs to begin here and now.
I say keep doing what you're doing. Let them sink or swim on their own abilities. In other words, continue to lay the smack down on their candy asses.
I pass out a "study guide" but it's a very long one: basically a list of almost every person,event, and thing in the relevant chapters, and a long list of "things they should understand" such as "be able to explain the role of the press in the New South movement."
ReplyDeleteIn freshman intro classes I use essay questions, from which they can pick, plus some short IDs and multiple choice questions. I rarely curve unless I find that everyone, even the good students, are missing a particular question. Then I figure it might be because I didn't cover that point well in class, or I poorly worded the question.
In upper division classes I use mostly essay.
And yes, I like using the first test to put a little fear into the students, a warning shot if you will. "High school is over kids! Time to study."
I don't give out study guides for two reasons. One is that the students will think, no matter what you tell them, that the study guide is the test, only bigger. They actually view you handing them a study guide as a contractual obligation, and will feel very ill-served if something shows up on the test that wasn't on it. The other is that making a study guide is part of the studying process, which I do not want to circumvent. I tell my students my reasoning when they ask for a study guide, and they seem to accept it as sound.
ReplyDeleteAs for tests, mine consist of about half quote identification and explication, and half essay. I've moved to the quote identification because I have found that many students are doing an end-run around the reading and perusing study guides and notes online.
As for the "fairness" issue, I deal with that after the fact, by telling the entire class the test average, and highest and lowest scores. There are a lot of curdled faces when I turn back tests, but least 15-20% of the students usually get an A. What I say then, delicately, is this: "When 20% of the students receive an A, this means that if you didn't get the grade you wanted, you can't blame the test. It was very possible to get a high grade, and a significant amount of students did."
They're still not happy but at least they get that it's not me, it's them.
That's the great thing about comp courses -- they have essays up until the final exam (though those create entirely different issues in terms of "fairness" and grading) and the final exam itself is an in-class essay on a prompt we (instructors) aren't told ahead of time. The only thing that they can "cram" is what they need to be learning anyway -- how to write well.
ReplyDeleteAs for quizzes, they usually don't know one is coming and when they do, I leave it very, very open. As in, they know they will get a grammar quiz sometime in the future that will cover a little bit of all the grammar I've had them look at or we've covered in class. They don't know the format, how many questions, how many points it's worth, or even what day it's going to be given. Perfect, ne? Means they actually have to *gasp* read!!!1! And, even worse, comprehend!!!
Amazing.
I think quite the opposite. For many courses, the exam is (almost) the whole point of the class. We want only to graduate students who can demonstrate mastery. If you can illustrate mastery in some set of the topics in a 2-hour exam, you should do so.
ReplyDeleteIn science, I'm amazed by the frequent refrain "I understand it, I just can't do the problems." This of course means that the student DIDN'T understand it - they mere comprehended it. The exams (and preceding prep and post mortem) are all invaluable for showing students how much or how little they know.
I admit that exams do not test ability to write or original thought or deep thinking, despite those things being valuable. But good exams can be (for the better students) learning opportunities, where they are focused and thinking about things. When else does that happen?
Allow me to speak in favor of multiple choice and short-answer tests. In my opinion, they are not lazy tests at all as some have suggested in the past. Rather, I spend hours constructing fair questions designed to assess whether or not students understand and can apply the information explained in class. With these objective questions, either students know the material or they do not. No subjective evaluation on my part. No trying to make sure I grade each answer consistently. No worry about giving mercy points. No BS from the students. Short-answers usually work the same way. Knowing material = points; not knowing material = no points.
ReplyDeleteI make these comments while in the middle of grading a test that is multiple choice, short-answer, and short essay. This assortment has made it painfully obvious to me that the students have learned little to nothing in the last few weeks.
As for study guides, I hate them. They were fine in 10th grade but are not appropriate for college in my humble opinion. However, after hearing students whine (in class and in evaluations) about not having study guides, I renamed the tab on Blackboard that contains the student version of my Power Point slides from "Power Point" to "Study Guides." I've simply remarketed a tool I already provided, but they seem to be satisfied now.
As for providing essay questions in advance, I guess I sort of do, but the morons have opted to ignore me. On the first day of class, I explained that the learning objectives on the syllabus would translate into great essay questions. I then reminded them of that before the first test. Apparently, I wrote the syllabus and spoke in Swahili because they are are still averaging about 3 out of 10 points on these questions.
Sigh. I guess I need to go back to grading.
Let me take a moment to take a break from talking about technical approaches to exams and give a mini-rant of my own about the first issue mentioned - Callie's feelings on grades.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Callie, but grades aren't the problem. If all you want is for your students to "care" about the material, you're missing an important element of your job. The grade you give certify whether your students have mastered the material in question. If it's a corpus that doesn't admit to questions of "mastery," then I'm not sure it belongs at a university, and if it does, then someone, somewhere potentially will care about your expert assessment of what the student actually knows about the discipline. When you give a grade, you are signalling to the rest of the world how much you think this student has it on the ball vis-a-vis your field of study, not how much he "cares" about it.
I've met kids who cared deeply about subjects, and who still couldn't pass the basic courses. I feel sorry for 'em, but I'm sure as hell not going to give them an "A" for "attitude," (in this case). Screw that. Someone, someday, somewhere might look at that grade with an eye toward making a genuine judgment of what this kid can do (unlikely, I know, but, hey, that's the idea), and I consider that my reputation on the line. I don't care whether the kid "cares." Can he or she do the work?
I mean, hell, I'd be sunk if "caring" matter in grading. I couldn't give a shit about many of the other sub-divisions of my own discipline, but I understand I have some vague obligation to be familiar with them (a) in case it should in some tangential way inform my own work or (b, more likely) I have to teach a lesson about them. I studied hard, applied my not inconsiderable abilities, and mastered the material. At no point did I genuinely "care."
Nobody wants to be the bad guy. Nobody but nobody wants to have to tell a kid he or she sucks at whatever it is that's being done, ESPECIALLY if the kid "cares." But that's the job - part of it, at least. It's not a fun part, but it is what we all signed up for. We're not camp counselors, we're not their friends... we're teachers. We teach them the material and we teach them, to greater or lesser degree, the skills needed to master that (and other) material.
One last thing. Don't think I'm not sensitive to issues about working at Grade Inflation Univ., either - I am. If a "B" is the grade the mediocre students at your school get, well, hell, give the mediocre kids "B"s. If the guy looking at transcripts down the line doesn't know the school sucks, that's his problem. You stay true to the context of meaning you're working in, and everything else will be cool.
I have to admit I flailed around trying to figure out the best test style for ages until I finally got my ass into an instructional design class (my virtual ass, as it was an online class).
ReplyDeleteIt was there that the world of Learning Objectives was revealed to me and I learned that what test you use is dictated by your learning objectives. So where once I too had scoffed at multiple choice and short answer, I learned that there many very good learning objectives for which those are the appropriate testing method. So now I pretty much teach the gospel of Knowing your Learning Objectives, then let those dictate the testing method.
Not being an expert in educational theory and giving the fact that it took me ages to wrap my supposedly well-educated brain around Learning Objectives, I can only recommend finding a friendly professor in education or looking for some reading on the subject to explain it appropriately.
I had a teacher who gave us the essays ahead of time. Heck, he gave us outlined answers for them.
ReplyDeleteSomehow, this was still the hardest class I ever had as an undergrad because you had to freaking memorize 15-20 essays for every test, and then he picked 3 of those. There were 5 exams and a final. It was a special kind of hell. He had, reportedly, never given a student higher than an A-.
I guess it's all in how you do things, though I much rather would have taken a teacher that expected me to reproduce my own thoughts on the material and given me an A for it. Blah.