I am in no way resentful about how Ms. O handled the situation, I am thankfully still in graduate school, but this memory does make me wonder. In this situation, Ms. O had the power of selecting a couple of questions to elicit a demonstration of "knowledge mastery." She did not happen, however, to select the topics I had studied in most depth. Of course, it is excellent when student performance and teacher expectations align. But what about when there's a mismatch? It was not the case that I neglected to study, or that I lacked understanding of the material. It was the case that I chose to study really hard about the topics I thought Ms. O would choose for the exam but happened to guess incorrectly about what those topics would be. Ideally, I would have mastered all of the information in the section, but for whatever reason I did not. I did the best I could in that situation to not disappoint myself or Ms. O by appearing to be a "bad" student, but I did not do "enough." I did not receive credit for the knowledge I demonstrated because it did not address the questions asked. It just makes me wonder how often this might happen--that students have the right answers, just not to the right questions. This makes me appreciative for assessment opportunities where students can select a topic from a list, or choose to answer two out of three questions, for example. Or, like someone at my table shared, to engage students in writing the exam questions. I know this has been a long story, but we have talked about the value of narrative, so I hope someone finds it thought-provoking or some other useful quality. At the very least, it has been a wonderful moment of reflection for me.
Yesterday as I was reflecting during our Jigsaw-style group discussion in Contemporary Pedagogy class, I remembered an experience I had taking an exam on tectonic plates in the sixth grade. Firstly, it is important to know that I really liked my teacher, whom I'll just refer to as, "Ms. O." Secondly, it is important to know that while I did not enjoy learning about tectonic plates or feel particularly drawn to the topic, I was determined to "master the material." To Ms. O's credit, she had tried some creative teaching strategies for this topic, including a fun song with body movements. So, with the exam day drawing near, I had been preparing with flash cards, reading notes, and our fun song. When I finally got to class and received the exam, I was stunned. There were only a couple of long response questions, none of which I had studied. Terrified by my not knowing, and worried that I would disappoint Ms. O, I immediately began to pour out everything that I had studied. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I had to show Ms. O (and perhaps myself) that I had taken the time to study the material and that I had not "blown off" her class. I filled up all the blank space with text and diagrams demonstrating that I knew a great deal about tectonic plates. I had no idea what Ms. O would think about what I had done, but I figured, at least she would know that I knew something about tectonic plates. After she had graded the exams, Ms. O spoke to me about what I had done. I guess she did the "proper" thing. She thanked me for showing her what I knew, but told me that unfortunately, though my responses were quite thorough and presented correct information, I had not provided the responses she was expecting for the questions she had asked.
I am in no way resentful about how Ms. O handled the situation, I am thankfully still in graduate school, but this memory does make me wonder. In this situation, Ms. O had the power of selecting a couple of questions to elicit a demonstration of "knowledge mastery." She did not happen, however, to select the topics I had studied in most depth. Of course, it is excellent when student performance and teacher expectations align. But what about when there's a mismatch? It was not the case that I neglected to study, or that I lacked understanding of the material. It was the case that I chose to study really hard about the topics I thought Ms. O would choose for the exam but happened to guess incorrectly about what those topics would be. Ideally, I would have mastered all of the information in the section, but for whatever reason I did not. I did the best I could in that situation to not disappoint myself or Ms. O by appearing to be a "bad" student, but I did not do "enough." I did not receive credit for the knowledge I demonstrated because it did not address the questions asked. It just makes me wonder how often this might happen--that students have the right answers, just not to the right questions. This makes me appreciative for assessment opportunities where students can select a topic from a list, or choose to answer two out of three questions, for example. Or, like someone at my table shared, to engage students in writing the exam questions. I know this has been a long story, but we have talked about the value of narrative, so I hope someone finds it thought-provoking or some other useful quality. At the very least, it has been a wonderful moment of reflection for me.
4 Comments
Ashley Hughes
2/13/2015 04:47:01 am
Natalie, I'm really glad you shared this experience. I feel like many of us have had similar things happen to us at some point in our education, and it is such a let down. I agree that sometimes it is the questions and not the answers that are wrong. Perhaps this is one way we let our students down through assessment. We limit their potential by offering them such limited ways for them to demonstrate it (scantrons, etc.). How can we offer assessment that does not force them into the problem you faced in the sixth grade?
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jamesbudnick
2/14/2015 09:25:36 am
Hey Natalie, great post! I have another way of thinking about the problem. I wrote my blog about an article written by a professor who posed the question, "why do we write exam questions if we don't think its necessarily important?" Really, we should only be teaching the students what we truly want them to learn and when we give them exams, the questions shouldn't promote the students to just memorize bits and pieces of the material. Exam questions should make the students think outside the box and piece the pieces of material together to see if the students truly understand the material from class.
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Elham
2/15/2015 11:32:08 am
Great post, I'm sure most of us had the same experience in our lives, I like classes that allow you to create the answers based on what you learn in the class and what you study at home, not rigid answers...the most important part of teaching is motivating to create new ideas.
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2/16/2015 11:12:04 am
As an engineer, I run into this often, but in a slightly different way. Many of our exams literally have three questions that will take 20-30 minutes each, which unfortunately means that sometimes during exams, I get halfway through the problem and get that "crap, I'm stuck" look on my face and realize I've now lost 50-100% of the possible points on that question - very similar to your Ms. O tectonic plates example. One of the most effective ways professors have mitigated that is by focusing on the process (i.e. - real life implementation). By giving students open-ended, scenario based situations, a true discussion can be had with the student after the exam to determine whether their thought process was sound vs completely made up. However, this is extremely difficult to use for the more "memorization" exams. But maybe there's a way to use this "big picture" mentality? *sigh*... tough situation.
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GEDI BLOGI am taking a Contemporary Pedagogy, a Graduate Education Development Institute (GEDI) course towards the Preparing Future Professoriate (PFP) certificate. In this section of my blog, I will be posting about topics related to innovation in teaching and learning. Archives
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