Exploring a Better Way to Test During the Shut Down
Halfway through the spring semester, living for Spring Break when I will get caught up on that ever-growing to do list, I certainly could not have predicted how much time I was about to have at home!
Spring Break passed normally enough with only hints of what was to come, building as the days passed. Finally it was announced classes were postponed the week following Spring Break so we could do an unprecedented pivot to take all our residential classes online and do something called “Remote Learning.”
I was in pretty good shape because of the way my teaching philosophy has evolved over the years. I actually had a lot of material on Blackboard, the Learning Management System we use as our digital classroom. I only had to figure out how to use Blackboard Ultra, an online meeting tool similar to Zoom. That allowed some feeling of connection to my students, a little bit of normalcy we all were craving.
My assignments were online already so all I had to add was a little clearer road map for them to follow as they now had to watch the videos, read the book and/or view power point slides to replace the in-class time. I have since decided the road map idea is good for my future residential classes.
Except for One Thing
How do you test students in a remote class? I had 1 test and the final to give according to my syllabus.
Blackboard is set up for tests. You can upload a publisher’s test bank or your own questions. Either way — how do you stop students from cheating? I always struggled with these issues around testing with previous online classes I have taught.
However, when the students sign up for an online class, they are agreeing they have access to certain equipment like a web cam so you can use some of the proctoring tools like “Respondus Lock Down browser.” I did not feel like I could do that in this case because none of them chose to be in an online situation.
Another strategy I heard a lot from professors was pulling a random set of questions from the test banks to lessen cheating if they worked together.
And then keeping the time available pretty tight so they would not have time to google each question. I have heard from others that most, if not all, test banks have been posted online and thus students could potentially google each question to find the answer.
But it has always been my philosophy to NOT write tests that are so long some students cannot finish. You are assessing speed more than knowledge at that point.
Accidental Discovery — A Better Way to Test
This started me down a road of reflection. Why do we test? What is its purpose?
- We need to report a grade for certification purposes. The system we are all in requires students to complete certain classes and grades are supposed to show the degree of mastery.
- Grades give an incentive to do the work. Professors dream of a world where the students are enthusiastic to learn for the sake of learning. However, I teach on Day 1 of intro microeconomics that “people respond to incentives.” In the real world, grades are the incentives that induce the effort to learn.
So if we need grades, what is the best method to get an accurate assessment of what the student knows? The goal of any test should be to accurately measure what someone has learned.
Traditionally in class, I have given a test with multiple choice, graphs and short answer questions. I have always had an uneasy feeling whether this approach really achieves the goal. It seems the reality may be it is assessing the skills of test taking, reading speed, reading comprehension, and memory as much as mastery of the material.
A one-on-one oral test where you can assess through conversation the student’s comprehension would seem to come closer to the true ideal. That is not possible with typical class sizes — however, I think written answers are a close second if not equivalent.
One big problem: an all essay test leads to intensive grading time, and I am not blessed with teaching assistants. But then, what is the professor hired to do — convey information only? Or also be there for feedback to aid the learning process and conduct the assessment to determine its success?
Now in this remote teaching world we found ourselves in, I created 3 short answer questions that allowed them to demonstrate their mastery, or lack thereof, of the material. The test was open book, open notes, and they had several days to work on it.
If I wanted to test their understanding of the supply and demand model and how we move to a new equilibrium when something changes, I could ask them to explain the impact of a sudden increase in the demand for hand sanitizer, how the market would move to the new equilibrium, and what would happen if the government enforced anti-gouging laws.
This question allowed me to see if they knew the laws of demand and supply, the difference between movement along a curve versus shifting a curve, and an understanding of factors that shift the curves, concepts I emphasized over and over.
Because they had to apply the concepts to the real-world scenario, copying and pasting from the internet is not incentivized, at least not for more than a definition, which was also accessible in the book and notes.
I did have their answers run through a plagiarism check so they did not feel the pressure to cheat based on the expectations that others would be cheating, a game theory type of problem that itself could be a question on the test!
What I Found
Well, grading was not quick. But it actually worked as a tool to let them show what they knew. You could tell who were using the terms and concepts correctly and could aptly apply them from those who just sort of, kind of got it.
When I go back to the classroom, I want to keep this type of assessment. But there is one type of assessment that I could not figure out how to do online — testing their graph reading ability. Since I teach economics that is a big part of the class. I have 4 tests in my intro classes, including the final, so now I will split them across these 2 styles.
- I will have 2 in-class quizzes focused on graph reading, like I used to have on the old in-class tests.
- Instead of the multiple choice test bank questions of old, I will keep this short answer application assessment for the first and final tests.
I am still trying to reconcile myself to the increased grading requirements of this method, but I think it really does prepare them better for their future. In the real world, these students will be given assignments by their bosses to gather information, make assessments and write reports, not recite some memorized facts and definitions.
College should give them exposure to knowledge and experiences that sharpen their critical thinking skills which will enable them to gather data and information, analyze it, and present it to their bosses. No time like the present to get them ready to produce this sort of application of knowledge.
