'Exam anxiety' can get you out of tests
Universities use alternate methods to check students' learning
By: Nick Martinfrom the Winnipeg Free Press
It's a recognized condition, says Dr. John Walker, director of the Anxiety Disorder Program at St. Boniface General Hospital. The University of Manitoba's disability services office last year registered 136 students who have medical certification that they suffer exam anxiety and must be accommodated with some other form of evaluation.
"It's a clinical problem if it causes you a lot of distress or affects functioning," said Walker, who's seen kids as young as six suffer anxiety from school tests. "It's a real problem."
Both U of M and the University of Winnipeg offer a wide range of options -- writing the test alone, with one supervisor in the room; taking an oral test; having more time to complete the test; writing an assignment that demonstrates knowledge of the subject.
But Walker and education officials emphasized that no one gets a university degree or high school diploma without having been evaluated.
"We don't want to say, this person should never have their learning evaluated," Walker said. "We work towards helping them successfully take exams.
"(Schools) don't abandon evaluation, they develop alternate ways."
U of M disability services director Lynn Smith said the university urges students to come forward during the summer, present their documentation, and work out with staff just what kind of accommodation they'll need.
"It could be from a medical doctor, or a specialist in the field, a clinical psychologist," she said. "Some students may even pay for further assessment."
I'm sorry, but sometimes anxiety is a part of life. I know this well and have gotten help for it. But that doesn't mean I can just avoid the things that cause me anxiety.
ReplyDeleteI experience anxiety on the first day of classes even though I've been teaching for close to 10 years.
I experience anxiety when I have to pay my bills.
Is there something else I could do instead? I want to keep my house, my car, my utilities, my insurance, food in my fridge, and my cell phone but isn't there another way to show that I deserve them without having to work and having to pay my bills?
Nope. I face the anxiety and continue with my life. Or, as I like to say, suck it up and deal with it.
We do this already: "Both U of M and the University of Winnipeg offer a wide range of options -- writing the test alone, with one supervisor in the room; taking an oral test; having more time to complete the test; writing an assignment that demonstrates knowledge of the subject."
ReplyDeleteThe "extra time" and "quiet environment" requirements are quite common, and once in a great while I'll get someone who needs to take the oral test. Those I find a bit bizarre, just because giving them feels like they are revisiting a very old test practice.
I quietly resent both the oral exam and the alternative assignment options because they are more (sometimes much more) work for me. The others are a logistical pain, sometimes, but otherwise not too bad.
I suspect that addressing these issues might be far more difficult in disciplines that do not readily lend themselves to alternative testing. How do you give an oral exam in calculus?
Oh if only I could make them all take oral exams! I grew up in a country that uses oral exams almost exclusively. Within about thirty seconds you know if the brat is bullshitting. You can more accurately assess whether they actually understand the material or have only a superficial grasp of underlying concepts. And most of all, you can issue grades on the spot. No stacks of exam papers to take home.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, Dog, you can definitely give an oral exam in mathematics. It might involve them working at a chalkboard while answering questions viva voce, but it can definitely be done. And it tests their grasp of concepts better than having them just solve some problems by rote.
Coincidentally I'm from Winnipeg, but those types of accommodations also occur at my current university. Are they that uncommon? Also, the University of Manitoba has about 25,000 students, so 136 is a drop in the bucket.
ReplyDeleteI am ambivalent about this. On the one hand, people with clinical conditions should get a fair shake. On the other hand, eventually a base level of competence is required. We don't hand out BA's with an asterisk and people need to know a degree means something.
I think we should be able to go get diagnosed with "overwork anxiety" and be able to skip giving oral or one-on-one exams if it makes us worry about our workload.
ReplyDeleteAs an anxiety sufferer myself, I understand the condition well. In all my years as a student, I had just a couple of attacks during testing. In one case (when I was really young), it was bad enough that the instructor just took the test away from me and told me to take it the next day, at which point I was fine. In the other, I had to calm myself down because it was college and I knew it needed to be done.
ReplyDeleteAnxiety is a controllable condition with good therapy and medication. Because of my own experiences, I can usually help students get calm enough to take a test if they truly are anxious. Relaxation and cognitive techniques are often all they need to put them back into the moment of the task at hand rather than their nervousness. I've had only one in 20 years who needed ADA accommodations for anxiety, and that was just testing at disabled student services, which was fine since he needed absolute quiet and no distractions.
Then there are the ones who think it's a get-out-of-work free card. I caught one young lady cheating twice in my class. She tried to use "I have an anxiety disorder" as her excuse for her behavior. When that didn't work, Plan B was "You don't understand. I'm not like your other students because I'm older and pay my own tuition." That one didn't work either.
There's a reason why this article was written, there's a current scandal at the University of Manitoba - a prof on a PhD student's examination committee was given several months' suspension without pay by the university for "harassment" for filing a judicial complaint that the student hadn't met the requirements to be awarded a PhD, as he had failed his Comps twice and the university had decided he didn't need to take his Comps due to "exam anxiety." I heard from a colleague that apparently the prof received notice of his suspension the same day that he received notice that he'd won a campus-wide teaching excellence award. Sheesh. With one hand they offer him the university's highest accolade as a teacher, with the other hand they smack him on the ass.
ReplyDelete@Archie: That makes sense re: chalkboard. I was imagining the student responding orally, which is what they have to do in our discipline. On the other hand, I can also vividly imaging my class reenacting dramatic tableaux of "Important Moments in Basket Weaving" so...uh...yeah. On the chalkboard. Perfectly reasonable.
ReplyDelete@Prof P: It seems a dangerous precedent to set that one would suspend a person for questioning the validity of a degree. I happen to know someone in my own Uni (although not in my field) who failed his comps not once but FOUR times. The standard in the department is a "two strikes and you're out" rule, so by rights he should not have gotten to take the exam the third, fourth, and fifth times. I'm not sure that there was any discussion of "anxiety," according to his lab mates he really was kind of lackadaisical generally.
@EnglishDoc -- You raise a valid point...I have a lot of respect for my students with mental health challenges who work to secure appropriate accommodation and treatment when necessary. (On a related note, recently I was also deeply heartened to learn that a colleague at Big Southern Private University shares my bizarro form of depression and that she'd found a supportive environment in her department. 'It's not everywhere that would handle it this way,' she pointed out, 'But you shouldn't feel like a leper.')
Last thing...when I took calculus exams, I regularly threw up before and afterward, I experienced the horrible "blank brain" etc. A friend tells me that she has been diagnosed with "math phobia" and I was like SERIOUSLY??!? I guess it's out there. I just thought I sucked at calc.
You know what else causes anxiety? Performing appendectomies, finding structures to convert to homeless shelters, producing plays, trading stock... Can anyone think of a single job that requires a college education that doesn't involve anxiety? There is a moment of truth for almost anything. And for the few things where there isn't, you don't need to go to college. If you can never take a test, be a Walmart greeter and go audit classes for enrichment. If Walmart greeter is too much for you, go straight to Social Security, I'll let you sit in on my class, but don't come to me and want good grades for not showing me whether or not you can do anything.
ReplyDeleteWorst anxiety moment ever: Student with horrible kidney infection during Study Abroad in country - neighboring - Starvistan being refused treatment at local state-run hospital because of his ethnicity. He was not a U.S. national, and eventually I had to be the ugly American threatening to call my embassy unless this guy was treated.
ReplyDeleteHe had a 104 fever and I really thought he might die.
Oh, and the time that Clueless Student "went for a run" in a not-quite-fully decommissioned minefield.
Def worse than calculus, but not by much.
When I get a student with a "documented" learning disability, I basically take it under advisement, then make my OWN decision about whether or not to follow the dictates of the disability services memo regarding that student.
ReplyDeleteI watch them carefully, give them the first easy quiz, see how they do, etc. When the memo says they need "extra time" on quizzes and exams, and/or that the student has dyslexia, etc., but the student scores HIGH on my quizzes with no special treatment, then I IGNORE THE MEMO.
If a student scores as well or better than others, with NO special treatment, I sure as FUCK am NOT going to give them special treatment.
On the other hand, if they are seriously and legitimately impaired, I can easily tell this, and I give them the support they need.
BlackDog, the technical term is Math Anxiety. And in my experience all students have symptoms of it. I can't decide how legit it is but I'm sure none of my students have ever *really* had it.
ReplyDeleteIn general, I don't resent student accommodations unless it creates more work for me or gives them an unfair advantage above their peers. In mathematics, extra time NEVER helps. I give all my classes "extra time" and it makes not a lick of difference. If they don't have it in the first 30 minutes generally they aren't going to get it. So it's a feel good "Look how nice I am" thing.
I'm not convinced that a distraction free environment makes a difference either. I've never had a student with accommodations that wasn't a C or lower student. They seem to use the accommodation as an excuse as to why they don't do well. I sometimes think that undiagnosed learning disabled or anxious students do better because they don't have that cop out.
Crazy Math Spouse, who is also a math prof, once had a calc student who was to have a formula sheet and notes for her accommodation. That seriously defeats the purpose of a calc test. How can you test their abilities to learn the derivative rules if they are allowed to use a notecard with the derivative rules on them!!! Fortunately this brain injured student wasn't so brain injured that she couldn't see the absurdity of her accommodation. She didn't use it. So I respect her.
AS oral exam in math is very doable. And according to several of my colleague is super easy to grade and requires little work other than the block of time. I wish that more of my accommodated students needed oral exams. It would become super clear to them how little they actually know. Some of my accommodated students come to me during the tests and ask for the definition of a term when I am asking them to define the term. It makes me hoppin' mad at the whole system.
@No Cookies: Wow! How very snowflake-y! Sure, sure, the people who do this for a living say the paper is no good, but *I* think it's awesome, so you should give me an "A"! But, of course, when you do it to the people over at disability services, it's TOTALLY different, because you TOTALLY know better than they do despite not working in the field. You don't, do you? Work in a field that would be cognate to diagnosing disability? I'm betting not.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and way to raise the liability profile of your institution, asshat. It's a charming bonus to your unprofessional behavior that it could totally screw other, totally innocent bystanders (aside from just disabled students, I mean).
I worked for a time at a large coastal Canadian uni, and was hearing (did not experience myself) stories of an older student couple who would take the same classes and were apparently somewhat difficult people, in addition to and separate from being each diagnosed with something like anxiety and as a result allowed to bring "service dogs" to class in the form of.. . handbag teacup chihuahuas, for emotional comfort.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. I'm not saying there aren't real disabilities out there, and I guess I'd defer to a diagnosis, even as I think "accommodations" are often abused. But I also remember getting through my classes with all A's, no less, while being so paralyzed with anxiety and depression that I was not eating or sleeping, and most of my brainspace was crowded with suicidal thoughts. It never occurred to me to do anything but try to function academically or drop out till I was better. I knew I needed psychiatric help, but I just never considered this an element of my academic life.
ReplyDeleteWhere did Bipolar Beth go? I wish she would comment on this. I'd love to hear from her.
As university administration grows, it increasingly keeps doing things that it shouldn't be doing. This is a prime example.
ReplyDeleteI have long wondered whether I shouldn't get being an astronomer declared a disability, so I never get scheduled for anything before 1 p.m. Whenever I get an 8 a.m. meeting, inevitably to discuss something that turns out to be not very important, I usually attend it after having stayed up all night: serves 'em right.
I should clarify - I agree that some diagnoses are crap, and some students could easily get through their "disabilities" and still turn out okay. But plenty of diagnoses are spot-on, and plenty of students absolutely CANNOT deal without certain accommodations. I, for one, feel that to override the recommendations of the disability center is, ceteris paribus, arrogant and snowflakey. It's not an indefeasible guideline, but it DOES take some kind of justification. Otherwise, we're just professor-flakes, doing whatever the hell we want for no reason other than we want to do it, and to hell with what the people who actually do this professionally say we should be doing. I'm not up for that kind of hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteI once heard (and this was from a grade school instructor) that there was a graduate student who would not leave his room, either due to stress-induced agoraphobia or an ubernerdly inability to handle the outside world. This was before the Internet, so he mailed a request to take his remaining classes (and I think he was in his third year) by correspondence; note takers would give him the gist of lectures and he cranked out term papers. He got away with this, and they mailed him his diploma. And yes, the teller said he went to grad school with Mr. Agora and witnessed his weird transformation from "normal" to a prototypical basement dweller.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that this sort of special assistance has been around since the 1950s if not earlier, so this blot on the glory that is Canada is not the thin end of the wedge.
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ReplyDeleteI too have serious doubts about "exam anxiety." However, I think it would be foolish of us to think we can diagnose our students or choose to disbelieve the disability center's documentation. I have a physical disability which is not immediately visibly apparent unless someone spends time with me and sees me struggling with daily tasks and chronic pain. I have had people, including people at work, decide that my disability is not real. It is simply not their place to do so; they are, in essence, calling me a liar and I don't appreciate that. So, as much as I wonder about the accommodation needs of some of my students, and as much as I smirk at "exam anxiety," if the disability center tells me to do something, I'll do it.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I too have found that the accommodations I give to such students never make any difference; the smart ones do well and the stupid ones don't and a quiet room or extra time or a chihuahua change nothing.
I had a professor during my undergrad career with a disability that one would only notice if he wrote on the board or using a document camera. In Cow State U's effort to seem hip and with it, the school phased out overhead projectors (the only way for him to convey the material without being in pain or causing headaches as the students attempted to see the screen projection of the material that would not focus.) He had to fight with the school every semester to get overhead projectors in the classrooms he taught in. Last I knew, he was still there. I wonder if he's still fighting with the No-Cookies-type people in the administration...
ReplyDeleteMathsquatch *Diagnosed ADHD and, if you deny me my accommodations, you might find yourself strung up in a tree* out.
"Exam anxiety" causes you not to be able to show what you know under exam conditions. Since what we're supposed to be testing is what they know, not whether they can take exams, I am perfectly happy to accommodate those who want some alternate method of showing me what they know, provided they've got a note from disability services saying they need it. This seems uncontroversial to me.
ReplyDeleteA colleague of mine had a student once who had such severe anxiety regarding testing that she puked the entire time of the test. My colleague was told to seat her near the door with a trashcan next to her. She then threw up multiple times during each test. =/
ReplyDeleteFor the sake of the other students, I would at least have given the puker a separate room. Yeesh.
ReplyDelete