Definitely would not have marked the student wrong for writing 5+5+5=15!

Thanks for your comment! And I agree that context can play a huge role!

I mentioned repeated testing in my blog post i.e. more tests rather than less tests. Carrie mentioned in her comment on my blog that such an effect is actually referred to as the “testing effect” and has proven to be very effective in the learning process. I particularly enjoyed a course I took in my senior year of undergraduate where we had to take 8-10 tests in the semester (no homework). I thought having these many tests was ridiculous, but this format worked so well. Although, the tests were not cumulative, having knowledge of the previous ideas, concepts was key in solving subsequent tests/exams. I agree that such a concept may not work for a field like Biology that relies a lot on memorization, where it is easy to say “I’m finished” and move on.

I really enjoyed this post. Assessments of any kind are inherently make value judgements about what is important and what is not. This type of format doesn’t leave a lot of room for imagination and as post says that is one of the most important components to education.

This weeks reading really made me rethink both the point of the assessments I have taken in the past, and more importantly how I set up my assessments for students in the future.

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I really like your point about seeking advice from people who are good at what you are trying to do. How can we incorporate that into a classroom? Thanks for your comment!

The glass bead song seems like a very interesting read. I think when I am done with this blogging semester I might actually read it
We do have to explore other teaching and grading avenues and not just be limited by the scope of what we are teaching/learning at the moment.

I appreciate your perspective, but I think we just view things differently. For me, my goal in school was to get perfect grades for several reasons that I will not get into now. But in other activities, my goal was to get better and improve. It was a different context and I had different expectations.

And there is a big difference between reflection and simply identifying errors or seeing what problems you got wrong on a test. For me, I would look at the solutions posted online and make sure that I could do the problems before the next test. But I did not truly reflect on what I did and why I did it. It is this step of reflection that is so valuable.

Thanks for your comment!

I really enjoyed your blogpost. Besides being in agreement about “Mamas being silly”, I whole heartedly agree with your points about finding the right answer to questions. In political science I think that too often we are pushing kids to find the right answer to political questions, and at the same time, by the time they get to college, they are waiting for their instructors to give them the right answer. The greatest achievements in our political thought has come from scholars who were willing to think about the world outside the box. To question our very foundations and be willing to take the risk of challenging them.

Grades certainly are not a good indicator of the success of a person in his life. We have to teach our students how to think for themselves.
It’s like what the proverb says: give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.

Memorizing and reciting back are rarely the right answer. Sometimes you have to do it, when you are learning the basics of a trade. For almost everything else, you have to learn while thinking on your two feet.