Practice Tips from Faculty – Effective Testing

Contributed by Steven Markoff, Instructional Specialist, Department of Accounting, Law, and Taxation

A constant lament among faculty is “how do we develop better critical thinking skills in our students?” Then they proceed to tell about all of the various activities that they do in class and in their courses to develop this. Yet still, it seems not to work. Why?

Well, here’s why. Students ultimately learn to how they are tested and graded – period. Too many teachers tell their students about how they don’t want them to memorize – that they want understanding. Then, when the test comes out, they test memorization. The grapevine is frightfully efficient on a college campus. If your exams emphasize memorization, they will know this from the very beginning.

I believe the key here is effective testing. I do the following:

1. In my 300-level course, I give 3 midterms and a fully-comprehensive final. By having more, each exam is less threatening and they always have an exam coming pretty soon. The fully comprehensive final makes sure that they don’t just push “delete *.* ” after an exam.
2. I write all of my own exams from scratch, for every class. And I give back the exams, so that they become more than just an assessment tool – they become a learning tool as well. No test banks. No repeating old exams. I know it’s a lot of work, but it pays off.
3. I allow my students one 8.5 by 11 sheet of notes, in their own handwriting, with no more than one line of writing per line on the paper. They have only one side of the paper and they can’t use tiny writing, so they really need to prioritize to decide what is important enough to put down. There is no need for them to memorize formulas, etc. This really makes me think extra hard about my exam too. After all, if they are sitting there with a page of notes, it forces me to create an exam that goes far beyond what they can write down on a note paper! It also makes writing test a lot more fun and challenging for me!

In the end, students will learn in the manner that they think you are going to test them. If you want students to think outside of the box and creatively, you have to test that way.