Quizzes and Exams

The relatively new Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology journal has a great feature called a “Teacher-Ready Research Review.” The examples I’ve read so far are well organized, clearly written, full of practical implications, and well referenced. This one on multiple-choice (m/c) tests (mostly

Decades of research on learning styles have resulted in widespread familiarity with the concept. Ask most students what kind of learners they are and they will often answer with a learning style descriptor—visual, verbal, kinesthetic, auditory, converger. Many will tell you they know because they’ve

Frequent quizzes encourage students to keep up with what’s happening in class. Quizzes motivate regular study and review. They give teachers a chance to correct students’ errors and misunderstandings. If they test students on key aspects of the content, they help students identify the content

Some instructional practices rarely change. Even though the teacher using them may have concerns about the approach, it may feel as though there isn’t any other way. Multiple-choice exams are a good example. Too often they encourage superficial learning, with students memorizing and then forgetting

Research on teaching and learning is being done in virtually every discipline as well as in various education subfields. Unfortunately, the research in each of these domains tends to advance knowledge independently. Faculty researching the effects of clickers in biology courses are usually unaware of

College teachers are always on the outlook for ways to help students better understand why their paper, essay answer, or project earned a particular grade. Many students aren’t objective assessors of their own work, especially when there’s a grade involved, and others can’t seem to

Testing has a prominent role in most college courses. It’s the method most often used to determine the extent to which students have mastered the material in the course. Say “tests” and thoughts jump immediately to evaluation and grades, with students thinking “stressful” simultaneously or

Although group testing is still not widely used, it is an approach more faculty are exploring. Creative approaches to design and unique features can prevent many of the problems associated with it. However, faculty are still very concerned with what happens when students discuss answers

It’s a practice that’s used by a number of faculty, across a range of disciplines, and in a variety of forms. Sometimes the lowest exam score is simply dropped. In other cases, there’s a replacement exam and the score on that exam can be used