Teaching WITH the Test

Teaching with the Test instead of Teaching to the Test.

The phrase, Teaching with a test can result in more than just a sightly different sentence.  It can define a paradigm shift.  Tests certainly help to show what a student can and can’t do.  But when used as formative rather than summative measures of progress, they can allow students and teachers alike to learn from mistakes as well as to reinforce recognized successes.  Student engagement is observably greater during a test than it is during a normal class period, so why waste an opportunity to benefit from that attentiveness?  

Mimicry

                        Page from Textbook

Students prepare for exams mainly using a set of resources provided by the instructor or school. Those resources generally have a "look" to them established by the textbook companies. Our freshman physical science book uses colored and bold-faced type to point out: section headings, major ideas, applications, and terms. Additionally, the text book available as a student resource uses: pictures, graphs, diagrams, and equations to further illustrate major: terms, concepts, and skills. It has been established that students perform better when the assessment item has a similar layout to that used by resources that were available for preparation.


Bookending

With a technique called bookending, the content of any given unit can be made more rigorous and relevant to students.  In bookending, a unit test is used as it might normally be used (as a gauge of student progress).  However, the unit test is modified (or bookended) to incorporate a practical application of the concepts in the unit as well as a reading passage that introduces the material found in the upcoming unit. Reminding students where they have been and showing them where they are going at a time when they are mercenarily engaged are bases for this test authoring technique.

Picture Perfect

Tests can tend to be wordy affairs, yet modern textbooks are often replete with colorful pictures scattered about on the page.  Incorporating pictures on tests can not only make a test more visually appealing, it can also help to engage students whose learning style isn’t verbal.  Colorful pictures with images similar to those presented in the textbook act as visual hooks.  For an extra touch, a few pictures are taken during each activity carried out in class.  Then at test time, those pictures taken in class are used on the test where the question relates to the activity.  This gives students another opportunity to see themselves as part of the test and participants in the learning. 

Zippering

This technique involves developing and incorporating test questions whose subject matter deals not only with the material in the present unit, but also articulates horizontally with information from a previous unit or vertically with another course. It is most effective when the material being presented was previously covered in class as an activity.

Forced Focus

One last technique for Teaching with a test involves differentiating for learner differences with a Forced Focus version of the test.  Some students have difficulty with the “questions” on a test as they are distracted by the other questions that they are not currently working on.  This situation can be made worse by the bookending and picture perfect techniques previously described.  To combat this problem where indicated, a separate form of the test is made where no more than three questions are ever placed on a page.  This causes a normal unit test to bloat up into a “packet”.  However with just a question (or two or three) on a page, a student can more easily focus his or her attention and thus avoid errors due to distraction.

Return tomorrow to see specific examples of questions that have been modified to conform to Teach with a Test methodology.

ABCs of A, B, or C.

ABCs of A, B, or C.

"Multiple choice test," is a prompt that can result in widely disparate responses from educators. From some, multiple choice tests are considered efficient tools to assess specific objectives. From others, multiple choice tests are a source by which negative stimuli are generated which can lower the self-esteem of the test taker and/or stifle creativity and self expression. Though the philosopher Nietzsche claimed that, that which didn't kill you only made you stronger, one would be hard pressed to find an educator who believed that bad assessment would be good for the student dealing with it. There are many sites which have suggestions for making more effective multiple choice assessments, but one of the common complaints against multiple choice assessments is that there are external mechanisms which can cause their use to limit learning to just what is on the test.

Return tomorrow to see how a change in perspective (and of preposition) can lead to a disintegration of one of the main complaints against written tests as a form of assessment.

Back to the Future

Back to the Future

When the need of educating baby boomers met with the turn of the 20th Century's Science of Management, traditional educational systems were born.

 http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/classical-scientific-school-of-management.html

This traditional educational system was meant to identify efficiently the proficiency at specific skills for large numbers of students. For what it does, it was scientifically refined to do well (for as such, it is modified until it does do it well). Two people who's work can be thought of as seminal in the traditional method are: behaviorist B.F. Skinner (operant conditioning) and E.L. Thorndike (conceiver of puzzle boxes and multiple choice assessment). Certainly these individuals contributed far more to the fields of psychology and to education than the tags being associated with their names.  However, for the purposes of this writing, these are terms of focus.  

Class size in a traditional 20th century classroom is 20-30 students. There are studies which suggest that the 21st century classroom student can benefit from class sizes 20-30% smaller. But what then is to be made of the claim that achievement gains can be made by opening a school's walls and letting students connect to the world via the internet? The perception is that students in a traditional educational setting may not be well served by techniques which are designed to work efficiently for groups of a specific size.  Take for instance the Hatchery Model example where chicks are sorted by gender by a few trained experts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_I9fnDbTs

A small number of experts can sort and meet the needs of a reasonably large number of baby chicks using specific processing techniques. But what if the number of chicks being processed increases, or the number of experts doing the processing grows, to the point where the needs of individual chicks are not met or not respected? To that end, the traditional methods of processing need to be modified or replaced to address any identified inadequacies (assuming that no chick should be left behind, so-to-speak).

The upshot of all of this being, that changes meant to improve a scientific management system are (by design) made relative to the system that exists. Thus to get to the future (scientifically speaking), we must confront and scrutinize the past.

Pass a Test or Build a House?

Pass a Test or Build a House?

Two years ago, our high school was visited by a team from Apple™ who shared with us tips and tricks by which we could best utilize Apple™ technology to improve our students' education. One of the videos that they showed which predicated their assistance was: Which Do You Want Your Students To Do: Pass a Test or Build a House? The purpose of the video was meant to reframe our assessments – students of the 21st century were not meant to fit into a mold, but rather were to flow out into society as: builders, creators, designers, dreamers and achievers. 

However, having been an educator for several decades, I began worrying that a shift toward project-based assessments and away from testing would be detrimental to the very students we purported to be preparing. Students preparing to exit high school are subject to a variety of traditional assessments (tests), which allow colleges, universities, and businesses to best initially place each individual within the system that they are joining. ACTs, SATs, ICAMs, COMPASSs greet those going on to further their education; while A+, PMSB, DPSelectrician, and HVAC are just a few of the many certification exams needed for those entering a trade. Add to this the desire of governmental agencies to certify that fundings they provide are having the desired positive effects, and it seems that 21st century students will need to be able to deal with tests if they hope to flow out into society as: builders, creators, designers, dreamers and achievers.

 http://www.ted.com/playlists/24/re_imagining_school.html

So whereas there are many a TED talk about how new teaching methodologies are needed to replace the "old ways", the question posed (in either or terms), "to pass a test or build a house," is poorly phrased.  Though building a house is the higher level endeavor, society is less than pleased to have you doing so if you can't show that you know the basics of building houses safely (i.e. pass certification tests). Doctors, Lawyers, Nurses, Draftsmen, Electricians, Plumbers, Heating and Cooling Repair Technicians, Geek Squad Personnel for Best Buy, all are expected to pass certification tests, and we as educators are expected to prepare our students for them. BOTH passing tests and completing significant tasks should be expected of students in a modern educational system.