 | Teach students how to take my tests, e.g. by using practice tests, sample
questions and answers, and indicating areas to focus on in review. |
| Use a "short form" syllabus at the beginning of the semester. |
| Make more prominent in my syllabus the rewards and lifelines available,
perhaps by collecting these "2nd chance" measures near the front
of my syllabus. |
| Use "double testing" [a.k.a. "mastery testing" and
"mastery learning": splitting current tests, or at least the first
one, to give one test and if the pass rate is low, offer an intensive review
and a re-test for a higher grade. This amounts to using the test to
"teach" the content or at least to review it or to get students to
focus on the content and on the way of handling a college test. We
agreed, though, that this process should NOT be written up ahead of
time, e.g. in the syllabus.] |
| Ask students to anonymously jot down what they didn't understand at the
end of a class and leave it on the desk or beside the door for possible
discussion at the beginning of the next class session. |
| Survival cards: J.W. Daniel reports ("Survival Cards in Math." College
Teaching 1988, 36.3: 110) getting 90 percent of students to read instead
of 10 percent by having students submit at the beginning of each class a
3" x 5" card with highlights from the day's assigned
reading--outline, definitions, etc., which he collects, stamps, and
saves. Cards are returned just before review for the test, during
which students can add to each card but not add more cards. Cards are
collected by the teacher and passed back at the test for use as aids during
the test. |
| More frequent testing in cybercourses, maybe mini-quizzes. |
| To use rewards and not punishments, I plan to drop the lowest test grade
at the end of the semester if the student attends at least 90% of the
classes. |
| Make a "How
to Meet the Challenge Page." |
| Don't tell the students something when you can ask them. [This idea
is to avoid simple recall questions by replacing them with inference and
opinion questions; that is, don't ask questions for which you know the
answers but instead ask demographic or opinion questions. For
instance, in a health class, ask how many students floss before discussing
the topic of gum disease. In an economics or accounting class, ask how
many students have received solicitations for credit cards since graduating
from high school, or how many per week.] |
| Give students a copy of Bloom's taxonomy (of cognitive levels) and
practice a bit with them writing questions beyond the recall level.
Then have students suggest inference, synthesis, etc., questions for an
upcoming test review session. |
1999