Rethinking exams and letter grades: how much can teachers delegate to students?

In this article we report a 3-yr study of a large-enrollment Cell Biology course focused on developing student skill in scientific reasoning and data interpretation. Specifically, the study tested the hypothesis that converting the role of exams from summative grading devices to formative tools would increase student success in acquiring those skills. Traditional midterm examinations were replaced by weekly assessments administered under test-like conditions and followed immediately by extensive self, peer, and instructor feedback. Course grades were criterion based and derived using data from the final exam. To alleviate anxiety associated with a single grading instrument, students were given the option of informing the grading process with evidence from weekly assessments. A comparative analysis was conducted to determine the impact of these design changes on both performance and measures of student affect. Results at the end of each year were used to inform modifications to the course in subsequent years. Significant improvements in student performance and attitudes were observed as refinements were implemented. The findings from this study emphasized the importance of prolonging student opportunity and motivation to improve by delaying grade decisions, providing frequent and immediate performance feedback, and designing that feedback to be maximally formative and minimally punitive.     

How Accurate Is Peer Grading?

Previously we showed that weekly, written, timed, and peer-graded practice exams help increase student performance on written exams and decrease failure rates in an introductory biology course. Here we analyze the accuracy of peer grading, based on a comparison of student scores to those assigned by a professional grader. When students graded practice exams by themselves, they were significantly easier graders than a professional; overall, students awarded ≈25% more points than the professional did. This difference represented ≈1.33 points on a 10-point exercise, or 0.27 points on each of the five 2-point questions posed. When students graded practice exams as a group of four, the same student-expert difference occurred. The student-professional gap was wider for questions that demanded higher-order versus lower-order cognitive skills. Thus, students not only have a harder time answering questions on the upper levels of Bloom's taxonomy, they have a harder time grading them. Our results suggest that peer grading may be accurate enough for low-risk assessments in introductory biology. Peer grading can help relieve the burden on instructional staff posed by grading written answers-making it possible to add practice opportunities that increase student performance on actual exams.     

Training metacognition in the classroom: the influence of incentives and feedback on exam predictions

In two semester-long studies, we examined whether college students could improve their ability to accurately predict their own exam performance across multiple exams. We tested whether providing concrete feedback and incentives (i.e., extra credit) for accuracy would improve predictions by improving students’ metacognition, or awareness of their own knowledge. Students’ predictions were almost always higher than the grade they earned and this was particularly true for low-performing students. Experiment 1 demonstrated that providing incentives but minimal feedback failed to show improvement in students’ metacognition or performance. However, Experiment 2 showed that when feedback was made more concrete, metacognition improved for low performing students although exam scores did not improve across exams, suggesting that feedback and incentives influenced metacognitive monitoring but not control.     

Cognitive Test Anxiety and Academic Performance

A new measure that focused explicitly on the cognitive dimension of test anxiety was introduced and examined for psychometric quality as compared to existing measures of test anxiety. The new scale was found to be a reliable and valid measure of cognitive test anxiety. The impact of cognitive test anxiety as well as emotionality and test procrastination were subsequently evaluated on three course exams and students' self-reported performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for 168 undergraduate students. Higher levels of cognitive test anxiety were associated with significantly lower test scores on each of the three course examinations. High levels of cognitive test anxiety also were associated with significantly lower Scholastic Aptitude Test scores. Procrastination, in contrast, was related to performance only on the course final examination. Gender differences in cognitive test anxiety were documented, but those differences were not related to performance on the course exams. Examination of the relation between the emotionality component of test anxiety and performance revealed that moderate levels of physiological arousal generally were associated with higher exam performance. The results were consistent with cognitive appraisal and information processing models of test anxiety and support the conclusion that cognitive test anxiety exerts a significant stable and negative impact on academic performance measures.     

No longer exempt from good practice: using exemplars to close the feedback gap for exams

In this paper, we discuss the anomaly between the increasing interest in feedback in current education research, the continued role of time-limited, unseen examinations as a form of assessment and the dearth of literature on feedback related to such exams. We argue that while exams have long been regarded as different from other forms of assessment, it is not justifiable to exempt them from the good practice that can, and does, inform these other types of assessment. We suggest a solution to providing timely, effective feedback for end of course examinations is to move the feedback emphasis to ‘feedforward’ by implementing exemplars (examples of real students’ work, generally of different qualities). This study adopts a mixed-methods approach to investigate whether there was a relationship between student use of exemplars before the exam and the final exam grade achieved (n?=?520), and to explore students’ and lecturers’ perspectives about the effectiveness of and engagement with exemplars. Quantitative findings suggested that those students who accessed exemplars did score better in their exams than those that did not. Qualitative data revealed that exemplars were received positively by students and lecturers, and we use this to provide practical suggestions on exemplar good practice.     

An Investigation of the Effects of Reciprocal Peer Tutoring on Achievement,Self-Efficacy,and Test Anxiety

Reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) is a cooperative learning strategy which capitalizes on the benefit students receive from preparing to tutor one another. In these experiments we investigated the effects of RPT on the academic achievement, academic self-efficacy, and test anxiety of undergraduate students. Undergraduate education majors enrolled in either human growth and development or educational psychology participated in the study. Students developed a series of test questions, used these questions to quiz each other prior to unit examinations, and provided corrective feedback to the questions. Statistically significant findings were inconsistent across the experiments. In short, RPT appears to have, at best, inconsistent effects on achievement, test anxiety, and academic self-efficacy.     

Frequency of examinations and student achievement in a randomized experiment

We carry out a randomized experiment involving undergraduate students enrolled at an Italian University attending two introductory economics classes to evaluate the impact on achievement of examination frequency and interim feedback provision. Students in the treated group were allowed to undertake an intermediate exam and were informed about the results obtained, while students in the control group could only take the final exam. The results show that students undertaking the intermediate exam perform better both in terms of the probability of passing the exams and of grades obtained. High ability students appear to benefit more from the treatment. The experiment design allows us to disentangle “workload division or commitment” effects from “feedback provision” effects. We find that the estimated treatment impact is due exclusively to the first effect, while the feedback provision has no positive effect on performance. Finally, the better performance of treated students in targeted examinations seems not to be obtained at the expenses of results earned in other examinations.     

A Study of the Professional Personnel of Wisconsin

The study was conducted to determine if students graded by the contract method (experimental group) would retain, for a 5-week period, the knowledge level possessed at the end of a 9-session venereal disease unit and if the contract students would retain as much, or more, knowledge than students graded by the traditional method (control group) . Ss for the grade contract group (n = 27) were drawn from two junior high school health classes and Ss for the traditional grading group ( n = 30) were drawn from two other health classes. Results of the ANOVA tests conducted at the .05 alpha level indicated that 1.) the grade contract students, as well as the traditional grading students, retained the knowledge level possessed at the end of the unit, and that 2.) the contract students did not retain any more, or less, knowledge than the traditional grading students.     

Student self-reported use of standards-based grading resources and feedback

ABSTRACT

Standards-based grading (SBG) tightly links student assessment to course learning objectives, providing students with meaningful feedback. A well-designed SBG system should ease first-year engineering (FYE) students’ transition to tertiary education by setting clear expectations and enabling self-monitoring of learning progress. However, when students fail to access and use resources and feedback to guide their learning, the effort to construct an SBG system is not commensurate with the student learning benefits. FYE students in a course using SBG self-reported their access to and use of SBG resources and feedback to guide their work on assignments and prepare for exams. Access and use was low at the start or the semester but improved mid-semester around exam time. In a subsequent semester, strategies were employed to increase students’ engagement with the SBG system. Students’ access and use was significantly higher in the beginning of the semester. Insights on students’ engagement related to course management decisions are offered.     

The fear factor: students’ experiences of test anxiety when taking A-level examinations

This paper presents the findings of a pilot study that explored students’ experiences of test anxiety when taking A-level examinations. Four focus groups were convened with a sample of 19 participants in the south of England to explore the triggers of test anxiety and the perceived need for interventions to assist high test-anxious students cope with the examination process. The findings suggested that the participants experienced two types of anxiety: ‘pre-exam anxiety’ (relating to, for example, revision and mock examinations) and ‘exam-day anxiety’ (relating to practical concerns, such as school policy on the arrival of students and the time available to complete the examination). Only three participants reported feeling that their examination performance was significantly impaired by test anxiety; most reported that a degree of anxiety aided their performance. With test anxiety perceived by most participants as motivational and useful, there was little support for any interventions from examination boards, parents or teachers to help reduce or manage test anxiety. However, based on participants’ experiences of the pre-examination period, it is suggested that test anxiety may impede students’ ability to prepare for their examinations, and that interventions during this stage may be useful. The findings also imply that there are some practical steps that could be taken by the educational community to help reduce students’ test anxiety.     

Open-book tests in a university course

In the few available studies on the use of books in examinations, open-book tests have been found to reduce pre-test memorization and anxiety during examinations without affecting academic performance. However, these studies were made with students in non-book systems, whereas systems which allowed books in all exams might be thought likely to create a non-fact-learning attitude in students. The present study was undertaken in a book-allowing system with 120 students during a regular course in physiology at a medical school. Each group sat two parallel 60-item multiple choice tests and used books in one test but not in the other. The tests took place about four weeks prior to the final examination, which is of the same type as the experimental tests. Recall items could yield less than 15% of maximum points, so that interpretation and problem-solving items predominated. Total test points with and without books did not differ significantly. An analysis of variance showed that the effect of books on recall items was only slight and that the two tests varied in difficulty, in spite of efforts to secure equality.     

Even after thirteen class exams,students are still overconfident: the role of memory for past exam performance in student predictions

Students often are overconfident when they predict their performance on classroom examinations, and their accuracy often does not improve across exams. One contributor to overconfidence may be that students did not have enough experience, and another is that students may under-use their knowledge of prior exam performance to predict performance on their upcoming exams. To evaluate the former, we examined student prediction accuracy across 13 exams in an introductory course on educational psychology. For the latter, we computed measures that estimate the extent to which students use the prior exam score when predicting performance and whether students should use the prior exam scores. Several outcomes are noteworthy. First, students were overconfident, and contrary to expectations, this overconfidence did not decline across exams. Second, students’ prior exam scores were not related to subsequent predictions, even though prior exam performance showed little bias with respect to predicting future performance. Thus, students appear to under-use prior performance despite its utility for improving prediction accuracy about future exam performance.     

大学英语教学中的学习焦虑成因及应对策略

分析了大学英语教学中学习焦虑的成因．指出学生有限的英语能力及测试带来的紧张和压力、教师的负面评价、学生自身的竞争心理及教师所布置的超出学生能力范围的学习任务等都是学生产生焦虑的因素。提出了减轻学生焦虑的策略,指出教师应帮助学生建立积极的自我概念,营造友好合作的课堂气氛。制定切实可行的教学目标和任务,并对学生的回答给与积极的反馈,对学生进行必要的考试指导等。     

A case for written examinations in undergraduate medical education: experiences with modified essay examinations

Abstract

A modified essay is an open-ended question about clinical presentations, with the goal to test application of basic science principles to novel scenarios. Due to high reliability and validity, multiple-choice question (MCQ) examinations are more commonly used. We have employed a combination of MCQ and modified essay examinations in medical school. The correlation between MCQ and modified essay grades is positive but small, suggesting they may be testing different cognitive levels/skills. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a non-graded mock modified essay on student’s performance and satisfaction, and outline our best practices. We have found that it is important to involve faculty from multiple disciplines to construct robust cases, and to review examinations and rubrics. The mock modified essay resulted in higher performance and student satisfaction, and fewer students’ comments related to subjectivity, frustration and anxiety. Yet, there was not an improvement in confidence. Moreover, there was no correlation between grades in the mock and graded modified essays, suggesting that the mock modified essay may not be useful to predict academic performance. Yet, the incorporation of a mock modified essay was useful to clarify expectations and provide guidance, potentially reducing the anxiety induced by an unfamiliar assessment.     

Using collaborative two‐stage examinations to address test anxiety in a large enrollment gateway course

Large enrollment foundational courses are perceived as “high stakes” because of their potential to act as barriers for progression to the next course or admittance to a program. The nature of gateway courses makes them ideal settings to explore the relationship between anxiety, pedagogical interventions, and student performance. Here, two‐stage collaborative examinations were implemented to improve test‐taking skills and address widespread test anxiety in an introductory human anatomy course. Test anxiety data were collected (using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire) before the first examination and last examination. Most students experienced decreased test anxiety over the course of the semester; however, some students may have experienced performance limiting conditions due to test anxiety at the end of the semester based on academic ability in the course (in “C” students when compared to “A” students: P < 0.00006 and “B” students: P < 0.05), overall academic ability (in academically weaker students: P < 0.025), and demographic factors (in women: P < 0.025). The strongest performances on examinations were primarily observed in already academically strong students (mean individual performance: P < 0.000, mean group performance: P < 0.000). Furthermore, changes in test anxiety were not significantly associated with the group portion of the examinations. Patterns of changes in test anxiety over the course of the semester underscore a complex interaction between test anxiety, student background, and student performance. Results suggest that pathways for test anxiety in “high stakes” courses may be separate from the mechanisms responsible for the benefits of collaborative testing. Anat Sci Educ 10: 409–422. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

Student use of PeerWise: A multi-institutional,multidisciplinary evaluation

This study explores the relationship between engagement with an online, free-to-use question-generation application (PeerWise) and student achievement. Using PeerWise, students can create and answer multiple-choice questions and can provide feedback to the question authors on question quality. This provides further scope for students to engage in discussion about the question with their peers. Data on PeerWise use and examination performance were collected from over 3000 students across six large undergraduate courses (in physics, chemistry and biology) over three academic years in three research-intensive UK universities. A reliable and valid measure of overall PeerWise activity was created and a multilevel model developed describing the relationship between PeerWise activity and student performance in end of course examinations. Using this approach, a significant positive association was found between students’ engagement with PeerWise and their academic attainment in end of course exams, even controlling for prior ability. The implications of these findings for educators are discussed.     

Classroom Anxiety and the Examination Performance of Test-Anxious Students

Abstract

This study examined the academic performance of low, moderate, and high test anxiety students within two classrooms which differed significantly in the mean level of anxiety aroused by examinations. When differences in classroom anxiety were not considered, a significant negative linear trend was observed between anxiety level and academic performance (p < .001). No differences were found in the academic performance of low test anxiety students within the two classrooms, but a significant interaction (p C .05) was observed between classroom anxiety level and the academic performance of moderate and high test anxiety students. Moderate test anxiety students tended to obtain slightly higher examination scores in the High Anxiety Section than in the Low Anxiety Section, white the opposite was true for high test anxiety students.     

Improving metacognition in the classroom through instruction,training, and feedback

Accurately judging one’s performance in the classroom can be challenging considering most students tend to be overconfident and overestimate their actual performance. The current work draws upon the metacognition and decision making literatures to examine improving metacognition in the classroom. Using historical data from several semesters of an upper-level undergraduate course (N?=?127), we analyzed students’ judgments of their performance and their actual performance for two exams. Students were instructed on the concepts of overconfidence, received feedback on exams, and were given incentives for accurate calibration. We found results consistent with the “unskilled and unaware” effect Kruger & Dunning (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134, 1999) where lower performing students initially displayed overconfidence and the highest performing students initially displayed underconfidence. Importantly, students were able to change both judgments and performance such that metacognitive accuracy improved significantly from the first to the second exam. In a second study, two additional semesters for the same course used in Study 1 were examined (N?=?90). For one of the semesters feedback was not provided, allowing us to determine whether feedback can improve both metacognitive judgments and performance. Our findings revealed significant improvements in performance paired with decreases in overconfidence on Exam 2, but only for students who received feedback about their performance and judgments. We postulate that feedback may be an important component in improvement metacognitive judgments.     

College students' ratings of student effort,student ability and teacher input as correlates of student performance on multiple-choice exams

In the class session following feedback regarding their scores on multiple-choice exams, undergraduate students in a large human development course rated the strength of possible contributors to their exam performance. Students rated items related to their personal effort in preparing for the exam (identified as student effort in the paper), their ability to perform well on the exams (identified as student ability), and teacher input that might have affected their exam performance. Students rated most student effort items higher than teacher input and student ability items. Notwithstanding, across all exams, ratings of student ability and teacher input correlated more strongly with exam performance than did student effort ratings. High and low performers on the exams differed significantly on ratings of student ability and teacher input, but were more similar on ratings of student effort.     

Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Grading Through the Use of Computer-Assisted Grading Rubrics

This study tests the use of computer‐assisted grading rubrics compared to other grading methods with respect to the efficiency and effectiveness of different grading processes for subjective assignments. The test was performed on a large Introduction to Business course. The students in this course were randomly assigned to four treatment groups based on the grading method. Efficiency was measured by the professor's time to grade the assignments; effectiveness was measured by a student satisfaction survey. Results suggest that the computer‐assisted grading rubrics were almost 200% faster than traditional hand grading without rubrics, more than 300% faster than hand grading with rubrics, and nearly 350% faster than typing the feedback into a Learning Content Management System. Results also seemed to indicate that the use of a computer‐assisted grading rubric did not negatively affect student attitudes concerning the helpfulness of their feedback, their satisfaction with the speed with which they received their feedback, or their satisfaction with the method by which they received feedback.