A number of us, and I think the School as a whole, say that one of our major goals is to “have students learn how to learn.” IF such is the case, then it occurred to me a number of years ago that we should be assessing the learning process, not simply the results of the process (which is, I think what a very large number of our assessments do in all subjects).
It’s also the case that one can scarcely justify (in my opinion) the frequency of our testing unless there is learning going on during at least some of the testing. Such an idea has some (albeit perhaps limited) currency in the educational world outside St. John’s.
While I’ve made these kinds of assessments in the past, I have tended recently (with one exception) to avoid them. As some of you know, the climate in the US traditionally, and particularly under Hollis’s predecessor, has not (at least in my experience) encourage innovation or risk-taking….
However, nothing loath, I have decided to again be “innovative” in regard to at least some assessments. SO….
Humanities people, do NOT stop reading here!
Today in Differential Equations, I’m giving a group test. Students will work in pairs, and they are given a handful of questions only. The basic concept of the test is one on which they’ve been working for two or three weeks. They’ve had a quiz (just to see what they hadn’t yet mastered at the time, which is the point of quizzes in that course) and a review sheet they’ve been working on the last couple of days.
What’s somewhat different is that at the bottom of the review sheet they got Tuesday, and I called their attention to this in class, is the following statement: “Note: If you want to take a group test Thursday, you should familiarize yourself with the method of Frobenius, which will help you solve many differential equations for which the regular series solution method (that we’ve been studying in class) fails.”
So, they needed to research this “method of Frobenius” outside of class (undoubtedly on the internet) simply in order to be prepared to take the test. As may be implicit in the bold statement above, it is an extension of the same basic idea on which they’ve been working for the past two weeks or so.
On the test, I am supplying them with the skeleton procedure of the method, so they did not need to memorize it, merely to acquaint themselves with it. I think that’s important. Memorizing is not a synonym for learning (in my opinion).
Students who find the test too hard or who don’t do well on it have the option to go back and take a more traditional, individual test. So, as I’ve pointed out when there was also a group test option for the last test, the only thing they’re really risking is time–not their grade. Unusually, this year everyone has opted at least to try the group test on both occasions.
Interestingly, some people tend to do better on the group tests and some on the individual tests, so in some senses this approach allows them to play to their strengths.
dwight
PS Note that only questions 4 and 5 on the test are typical “find an answer” questions. The others ask for reflection and analysis about why and how. Even, God forbid, for speculation .
Link to the test here