Teaching to the test – maybe not a bad idea?

Guest Blogger: David Royer

No, I am not advocating for more standardized testing or teaching to the test in K-12, but I am searching for ways in which we can help our students prepare for the challenge of achieving a competitive score on the standardized exams that are required for admission to graduate and professional schools.  These include the LSAT, MCAT, DAT and GRE.  Most of my experience is with the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), and it is frustrating when a student with an outstanding academic record at Lincoln has an average or below average score.  This disconnect becomes a major obstacle to gaining admission to medical school for our students.  The MCAT is the one common element in every student’s application to medical school; they all take the same test, and medical schools can compare all applicants using this test.  These test scores become particularly important when one of our students applies to a medical school that has never had a Lincoln student or does not know anything about Lincoln. 

From talking to other faculty members, this issue is not restricted to the MCAT

This leads to the question of why the disconnect between MCAT scores and GPA?  I do not have all the answers but one reason is that the test is unlike anything our students have seen before for many reasons.  First, it is a long exam; not counting the breaks, the exam lasts six hours and fifteen minutes; there is one 30-minute break and two 10-minute breaks, all of which are optional.  Second, the exam requires strong reading skills.  As an example, the section on the Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems includes ten passage-based sets of questions with four to six questions per passage.  There are also fifteen independent questions.  The total is 59 questions that must be answered in 95 minutes.  Last, the breadth of the exam is very wide as it includes biology, chemistry, physics, biochemistry, psychology and sociology, the latter two included in a new section that was added to the MCAT  in 2015.

From talking to other faculty members, this issue is not restricted to the MCAT so the question I am posing through this blog is what can we do differently in the classroom to better prepare out students for these exams, and yes, I am suggesting that we do a bit of teaching to the test.  While I agree with most parents and teachers that it is inappropriate in K-12 classrooms, I believe that there must be some things we can do in the college classroom that will improve out students’ scores on these standardized exams without compromising the content of our courses which is also important for strong performances on the exams.

What do you suggest?

Learning beyond exams

If I asked “Are exams a necessary part of college education?”, chances are that many of you would answer yes. As educators we haven’t come up with a better way of measuring student learning, and after all, how would we give grades if we didn’t have exams? But do students learn much from exams? We know that our students often cram in order to pass an exam or quiz, and I hear constant complaints that they do not retain knowledge or that they are unable to apply knowledge learned in one class to projects in another class. While I’m not suggesting that we should blame the lack of learning on exams, I wonder if there are creative ways to use exams to enhance learning beyond the traditional studying that takes place before the exam. What do you do after the exam?

I must admit that akin to this week’s Faculty Focus blogger, I am guilty of often keeping exam debriefs very short; most often I don’t feel like I have the luxury of spending precious classroom time reviewing exams, especially as most students seem to have very little interest in revisiting their exam mistakes. However, if I really want to focus on learning, I know I should take the time – or require the students to take the time – to reflect on their learning through the mistakes they made on the exam. In her blog post, Maryellen Weimer summarizes a few published strategies to enhance learning from exams:

1. Allow students to correct their own questions; this can be done individually or in groups and immediately after the students take the exam (before they know their score) or once the exam has been returned.
2. Require students to reflect on why they made exam mistakes and have them look for patterns that reveal holes in studying strategies, skill mastery, or content knowledge with the goal of improving study techniques for future exams.

I used the first strategy a few times when an entire class performed horribly on an exam; instead of reviewing the exam with the students, I gave them the opportunity to work in groups to correct their mistakes using all available resources including the book and electronic devices. I then re-graded the exams and bumped everybody’s test score with a number of points that was equal to half the difference of the class average of the first and second exam score. This I felt was fair, as the adjusted score still reflected the initial study effort that each student had put in, but also gave everybody the opportunity to raise their scores. Surprisingly, the scores on the re-graded exams were far from perfect, which told me that there were major concepts that the students had not grasped, or the majority of the class had completely misunderstood. This gave me an opportunity to go back and correct misconceptions. In hindsight, I wish I had asked the students to reflect on their learning after the exam and the re-grading exercise, but that will have to wait for a future exam.

How do you handle exam debriefs or retakes? Do you let students take an exam over? How do you deal with exam scores and grades if you allow any kind of re-take? Do you incorporate reflection after exams and, if you do, have you found that it helps students become better learners?

A Homecoming of the Activist Spirit: Students’ Rallying Cry for Faculty Support

Guest Blogger: Jamila Cupid

Tuesday, March 22, 2016 – Student at Howard University protest to increase awareness of rape culture at the institution, after a female student brought forth rape allegations. 

Saturday, September 24, 2016 – North Carolina students and Michigan State football players raise their fists in protest of the national anthem, following NFL football player Colin Kaepernick’s lead, after the murder of an unarmed Black man in Tulsa, OK. 

Thursday, October 6, 2016 – The Boston University School of Social Work Student Organization led students, faculty, and staff in a rally to support the Black Lives Matter movement.   

Monday, October 10, 2016 – Students at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa staged a massive protest to demand free education. 

These are only a few examples of the student activism taking place on college campuses this year.  As students seek improvements in their institutions and the society at large, they find their voices and ignite change.  Over the past couple of weeks, at Lincoln University, we have watched our own students take a stand when they staged a sit-in and launched a campaign calling for improved conditions on campus.  The students have repeatedly expressed concern over their academic experience as well as the quality of campus living.  They are insisting on answers from the university’s president and board of trustees.  Customized announcements, such as the one pictured below, have been posted throughout academic buildings and dormitories to inform the entire community of their efforts. 

When I first came across the message on my office door, I noted something rather peculiar in the wording.  Students seemed to anticipate that their faculty would “threaten” their movement.  We are a faculty body at the first degree-granting historically black university.  We come from various eras of activism, from the Civil Rights to Black Power to Black Lives Matter Movements.  Collectively, we understand what it means to demand what we need in order to thrive in our environment.  I could not understand why our students would suspect that we, their educators, would not support them.  So, I held informal chats with a handful of them.  To categorize their responses, they expressed the following:

o   Students believe faculty are on the side of the administration, so it is unlikely faculty will support them.

o   It seems faculty are facing many of the same challenges and feel disempowered.

o   Students believe some faculty strongly support the students, but it’s not enough without the support from the administration and board of trustees.

o   Students feel that most faculty have not addressed any of the academic problems in front of the student body.

These conversations with students raise the questions of how Lincoln University faculty could become more in tune with the resurgence of student activism in our world and, particularly, the current efforts of our students right in our back yard.  I do not doubt that there is support for them among the faculty body, as many of us constantly assess and revise curricula for improvement, implement new programs, fight for more academic resources for student development, call for excellence and more.  Yet, we must hear them when they say that support has not been widely revealed to them.  How do we ensure those who look to us for guidance know we are here for them in their plight?