Furthermore, high-stakes testing doesn’t disappear after high school. Many college courses still rely on cumulative exams, and many professions give cumulative exams as a requirement of licensure.
So why not give such exams? For me, it’s about what I’m trying to assess. If a student has mastered course skills and content but struggles with organization, time management, or focus, is she going to be able to show me what she really understands? Or will her performance on my exam be hindered by her challenges in these areas? And if so, am I really seeing what she has learned in my class? I am not–unless my class has spent as much time teaching organization, time management, and focus strategies as it has on teaching course content, and that’s the subject of a whole other blog post! To really get at student learning I can give a non-cumulative exam, one that focuses solely on synthesis and application, providing cumulative frameworks and outlines during the test itself. I can assign a project, paper, or performance that requires the use of the content and skills students have been learning and allows checkpoints where I can help students learn and practice effective executive functioning skills along the way. I can ask each student to write an exam, using all the resources at her disposal, and learn more about what she understands about my course material than her performance on an exam I’ve written would tell me, particularly if I ask her to explain her decisions orally or in writing after she’s created it. Cumulative exams aren’t all bad. I just believe we can do better.
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That need not be the case! Innovation and creativity are the basis for cumulative exams as well.
As an educator, I innovate, create and work hard to make cumulative assessments that give students choice in how to explain what they’ve learned in order to honor their unique ways of processing learning. If students need to write or speak (Yes, a cumulative exam can be spoken!) I give at least three prompts from which to choose. The directions specify: do the one that best shows what you know. I emphasize that I look for excellence, not perfection; errors are necessary when using grammar and vocabulary in authentic ways. If images speak louder than words to demonstrate comprehension, students have the option to draw a comic strip or a timeline to show their understanding. When students have ownership over how to give their learning back to you, and they can be creative in how that happens, cumulative exams are an effective means to learn what students know. If students want the safety net of traditional activities on a cumulative exam to lift their confidence, mix in fill in the blank or true/false activities to ease their nerves and reassure them of their mind power! Cumulative exams can be the solid evidence needed for us to believe in the system and in each other. While there will never be “a one size fits all” assessment tool for students, cumulative exams still indicate who gets it, who needs more TLC and practice to fully grow in their learning, and how we, as teachers, can innovate to get them there.
Have humanities teachers misguidedly envied math teachers, who supposedly can reduce learning to right or wrong answers, even when students’ computation is also evaluated? Has everyone envied teachers in the arts, who have customarily been relieved of assigning final written examinations, although some may be called upon to proctor under special circumstances?
Has anyone in the history of education ever really enjoyed sit-down final examinations, except for the contemplation of the giddy elation that comes when they’re all over (including, for teachers, turning in grades)? While there is little doubt that cumulative assessments are useful tools in the learning process, there is doubt about the value of making students sit for a few hours in silence and relative isolation as they spew out “learning,” or of making teachers reduce an entire curriculum to a set of questions to be answered—in writing, and in silence and isolation. We ballyhoo the virtues of active learning, but is the dead quiet room of ordered desks and gimlet-eyed proctors minding a room of ordered desks a very active place? Or a joyful one, in any way? Think of the ominous language around such exercises. “Exam security” must be tight and invigilators stern, lest there be “cheating.” Students who don’t “cram” hard enough may “flunk,” or even “flunk for the year.” In high school I had to “pledge my honor as a gentleman,” in writing, that I hadn’t cheated on each exam. Fun? Thirty years ago our late friend Grant Wiggins taught us about “authentic assessment”—assessment that actually relates to and that may (should? Yeah!) incorporate and model actual work done in the field and address “real world” issues to which students might relate as members of the human community. Problem-solving and “design thinking” have proven to be pretty engaging, and asking students to explain and advocate for perspectives and solutions to hypothetical audiences invites critical and analytical thinking as it builds communication skills. Yes, there is a place for fact-based learning, and knowing some historical dates, scientific formulas and definitions, and the multiplication tables is useful even in a world of calculators and search engines. Oh, and of artificial intelligence, because students need to have enough actual knowledge to catch Bard or ChatGPT in fallacy or error. This kind of factual, even rote, learning can easily be built into the mastery of disciplinary content and skills as it undergirds complexity and nuance. Check out Bloom’s taxonomy and take the short routes to the lower levels of knowledge—but give students opportunities to contextualize these lower levels as they scale the heights. We remember Edmund Hillary not because he could tie his boot laces but because he shared in the first ascent of Mount Everest with his Sherpa guide and high-altitude climbing expert, Tenzing Norgay—but he needed that basic skill in order to reach the top of the mountain. You may know people who can recite every line and lyric of their favorite musical, but that doesn’t make them Audra McDonald. There is always that argument for giving sit-down final examinations that begins, “But in college they’ll have to….” That’s as may be, but I invite readers, as college breaks begin and recent graduates return to the halls of your school to say hello, to inquire about this. You may find, whatever your discipline, that presentations, projects—group and solo—and papers may be more prevalent than you thought. Some giant “intro” lecture courses may yet feature traditional examinations, but take-homes and other forms of cumulative exercises have dialed down the old stress fests of “exam weeks” on college campuses. My own queries have borne interesting fruit. “Our final skits and videos [as students] were a better language activity” than the sit-down finals one young language professor had to give as a teaching assistant in an introductory university language class. “I would say,” they add, “high school exams were not significant preparation for my undergraduate career, overall. Certainly for English and history it would have been way better prep to have a final essay” rather than an examination. A young teacher’s recent undergraduate experience entailed “I’d estimate, one [sit-down examination] per semester on average,” noting that instead of bluebooks, their wealthy university’s “proprietary books were white.” Growing and showing great merit—and aligning with educator rhetoric about the value of collaborative learning—is the use of group projects, presentations, and performances as final, cumulative exercises. Collaborative authentic assessment that fits perfectly with Bloom can be as rigorous as any 3-hour sit-down as a powerful demonstration of the skills and understandings and not just the “knowledge” that are part of a well-designed course’s comprehensive learning goals. Thoughtful design can ensure that work and learning loads are equitably distributed. (And as noted earlier, “first” ascents of great mountains are just about always collaborative enterprises.) And let us acknowledge, finally, that the whole concept of graded, sometimes competitive, paper-and-pencil examinations is rooted in cultures where mastery of factual, procedural, legalistic, predominantly verbal knowledge is a key status marker. Around the rest of the world and for millennia, DOING things—often with peers—has been more valuable to individuals and their communities than “book learning.” Authentic, active, and collaborative final assessments make more and more sense as the world’s complexity becomes more apparent and urgent to rising generations. And just because “they have to [do something] in college” doesn’t justify denying students opportunities to explore and analyze more deeply and to create and advocate more vigorously and often—and in concert with others. Let’s consign the bluebooks to the back of the closet—or recycle them, for a better world.
I stopped giving reading quizzes long ago because I realized I was assessing whether students remembered four particular things from a text that contained countless important bits of information. They could have known plenty, but if they forgot two of the four details I had decided to ask them about, they failed. That is clearly not an accurate assessment of knowledge retention.
Students, like all people, need the particular knowledge that is useful in service of some desired end. The best assessments provide students with a genuine performance task that matters to them and that may even impact the world. Completing such a performance task will undoubtedly require knowledge, but more importantly it will necessitate the transfer of that knowledge and associated skills to a new, authentic context. Only then can one truly assess whether or not a student has mastered the material for a class. It’s true that traditional cumulative exams can assess things beyond knowledge retention. There is no doubt that even a well-crafted multiple choice question can require analytical and critical thinking skills. However, why not assess those same skills through projects that require additional skills such as creativity and communication – projects that allow for student voice and choice, and projects that can be presented to an audience so that the learning can be shared and celebrated? Some will answer that we need to give cumulative exams in high school to prepare students for cumulative exams in college. But the lack of pedagogical sophistication students may encounter in college is no justification to engage in mediocre educational practices in our schools. Just because there are better ways to assess than cumulative exams does not mean that there is no place for quizzes and tests in a class. These tools can be helpful as part of the learning process, but they should never be the culmination or the end product. In their professional lives our students will take few, if any, exams, while engaging in project after project after project. If you must, give quizzes and tests to help build mental muscle, but please finish your class by allowing students to put those muscles to use in a more meaningful way. |
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May 2024
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