Teaching Tales: Testing Problems

Here follows the second installment of my series on my experience as a biology professor at NVCC and GMU.

How Hard Should it Be?

It was time for the first exam. Since many students didn’t take notes, I figured the material was probably too easy for them. I carefully included the questions suggested by the assigned textbook, since I thought those would be the required level of difficulty.

On the day of the exam, I arrived in the lecture hall to see most of the class furiously reviewing their notes and leafing through their books. This was strange! “Okay, please sit in every other seat, put away your books, and get out your Scantron standardized testing sheet.” Nobody moved. 

I raised my voice a bit. “If you don’t know the material by now, another five minutes won’t help. Put your things away.”

Students!

“Uh, Dr. Crocker? You didn’t tell us we needed a Scantron,” claimed a student who always brought his pillow to class.

“Yeah, she did,” came the chorus.

“Mohammed, are you telling me that you forgot to bring one? Okay, I have extras, but you’ll need to give me one back when you have them.” 

“Dr. Crocker, I forgot a pencil. Can I fill it out in pen?”

“No, Tina, you’ll need to borrow a pencil from someone.”

After resolving these and other issues, I distributed the exam. During the test, I walked around the classroom, answering legitimate questions, watching for cheating, and encouraging those who seemed overcome by panic.

I stopped short in front of one young man. He had actually fallen asleep! I bent down and spoke quietly. “Joe, would you rather take the exam when you’re not so tired?”

“No, I’m okay. It won’t help anyway. I just worked all night.”

 The Results

My fear that the test was too easy was confirmed in my mind by the steady stream of students who put their completed exam on my desk and left early. I collected the Scantron sheets and proceeded to the grading machine. As the exams went through, I glanced at them to see how the class had done.

To my dismay, most Scantron sheets had a LOT of red on them. Fully 50% of the students had failed the exam, and only one had a grade of over 90%! The university had assigned the text and specified what should be covered, but the students were not doing well.

My next stop was my supervisor’s office.

He pursed his lips. “Don’t worry. This is totally normal for Bio 101. Just shrug it off.“

 A Challenge

This sounded like a challenge. I sat down in the adjunct faculty lounge with a cup of coffee and began to ponder what I could do to fix the problem. Curving the test was a no-brainer, but clearly, other changes had to be made.

I didn’t want to compromise and lower the standard; after all, students come to university to be educated. However, at the moment, they were not even learning the facts, let alone being enabled to understand, apply, and critique the knowledge they gained. 

Since many students didn’t take notes, I decided to put my lectures on PowerPoint slides in the future. This way, I figured the students would have outlines that would help in taking notes.

I also instituted extra credit, which consisted of turning in handwritten lecture notes on exam day, an effort to encourage note-taking and review.

Finally, I tried to make the next exam easier, making sure that at least one answer in every multiple-choice question was clearly wrong.

To my dismay, only 60% of students passed the second exam. Better, but still not good enough. Since only half the class took the extra credit opportunity, I knew this was not entirely my fault. Nonetheless, I wanted to find other ways to help students learn biology. Sometimes, being a teacher is as much about innovation as it is about education.