Making Examinations More Collaborative

Jim Harnish

        The coordinated studies model encourages the development of a culture of collaboration as faculty and students use seminars to read and explore the same texts and challenge each other's ideas in an open, supportive intellectual atmosphere. But faculty often draw the line on collaboration when it comes to deciding whether to include traditional exams into the program, arguing, "If we don't have exams, how will we grade students fairly?" or "When they go to other college classes, won't they need to know how to take exams?" or "If we don't threaten them with exams, they won't feel compelled to come to our lectures!"

        In a collaborative spirit of compromise faculty teams at North Seattle Community College have been experimenting with ways to make the examination question?writing, student preparation, and evaluation process more collaborative while continuing to have students individually take the exam in traditional blue books.

Collaborative Preparation

        Here is how we prepare a mid-term exam. We have students review all the books they've read, written about and discussed in seminars, their lecture notes, and other program material and ask them to list ten of the most important items they have learned or understood. Then we ask them to turn these statements into questions.

        We next define different kinds or sources of knowledge and therefore different kinds of questions which require different responses. We label these three different categories of questions as FACT, CONCEPT and THESIS.

        Fact Questions. We teach students to recognize fact questions as those asking for knowledge which has clear reliable sources of validity, readily available and easily referenced. For instance, identification or dictionary definitions, obvious information from a story-some of the who, what, where, when type of material-quotes from an author or lecturer. Fact questions require black and white, true or false responses. This is the stuff of "objective tests." We direct students to label their questions which fit this category as fact questions. Here are some examples:

Name Plato's three parts of the soul and corresponding virtues.

According to Locke what are the two thought processes one must go through to attain knowledge?

Identify: Four Noble Truths; Dogon People; empirical data

        Concept Questions. More complex processes of thinking are demanded with questions that ask one to sort out facts, to do something with a larger body of information, to ferret out a concept that might not be so evident or clearly identified as the fact items above but still is somewhat objective in that, given the source, a thinking person could defend the validity of the answer. These, which we designate concept questions, require a paragraph or two to adequately respond. Here are some examples:

Why does Plato say that philosophers are those most fit to rule?

Explain how Machiavelli responds to the question of whether it is better for a prince to be loved or feared.

        Thesis Questions. Finally, students identify questions which require them to develop a hypothesis and provide supportive evidence and a logical organizational structure in order to validate the response. These are thesis or essay questions. For example:

How is Gould's concept of "Times Arrow, Times Cycle" reflected in two of the works we have read?

Compare/contrast the role of the teacher in Plato, Buddhist Scriptures, and Lao Tzu.

Compare Machiavelli's and Plato's ideas of a good ruler.

        Once students have understood these different categories of questions we ask them to sort out their own list of questions in small groups and put several of them in each category. Then we put a few of their categorizations on an overhead projector connected to a Macintosh, analyze them and figure out what each question is asking, why it is more of a fact or concept or thesis type question, noting that there is some overlap in these categories. In this process students refine their skill of exploring material for more complex questions and thus are better prepared for future thinking about any new material.

        Study Guidelines. We collect the students' questions, add some ourselves, edit them and reproduce and distribute them to students as a study guide for a traditional blue-book exam the next week.

        Students instantly form study groups, if they haven't already realized the importance of collaborative study, and in the next few days they engage in creative processes, exploring and searching and thinking about all they have read, listened to, argued about and experienced. Everything gets rehashed and then refocused enough so they will be able to respond to the some of complex questions they know will appear from the study list on the actual examination. We include some meta-cognitive questions as study questions (but do not include them on actual exam because they are too subjective to evaluate) to direct students to reflect on the development of their own learning process. For example:

What important change in your thinking or understanding about life and learning has taken place and how have specific works contributed to that change?

        We add to their preparation by having a practice exam-writing session or writing workshop, in which everyone is asked to write on a fact and concept question. We put some responses on the overhead and the group critiques what is a good, better, best response. They already know what is necessary for a good essay because they have had much practice writing and critiquing their own and others' essays in the composition component of the program so we don't spend time with model thesis questions.

        Individual Test-Taking. On the actual exam day we have a three-part exam with questions selected from the study list. For parts II and III they can use books and notes. The directions state:

Part I. Fact/Identification Questions. (20 points): Choose 10 of the following 15 for 2 points each. Expectations: One or two full sentences which clearly define or identify the essential aspect of the item as verified by pointing to specifics in an accepted source.

Part II. Concept Questions. (40 points) Choose 2 of the following for 20 points each. Expectation: In one paragraph clearly explain this concept, demonstrating that you accurately and fully understand it. Use a clear introductory statement with several specific examples.

Part III. Thesis Questions. (40 points) Choose one of the following. Expectations: A well-organized essay with one clear hypothesis, use of specific evidence related to hypothesis and clear organization.

        Up to exam day there has been much collaboration going on in the writing of questions and in the study-preparation process. But in the next stage during the exam period the students work individually and the teacher again becomes the traditional authority figure and will correct/grade the responses in each student's blue book. One member of the faculty team takes all the blue books for Part I, another, Part II and so on. This provides for uniformity in evaluation across each section. Each student gets one third of his/her exam read by a different evaluator.

Student Response

        Students report that this question-creating, study and examination process is the turning point for their understanding the connections in the material of the program. They begin to see how to work with the material, to question it, to make connections and draw their own valid conclusions. They know that a good response doesn't simply please the teacher but meets the objective criteria set by their study group or the larger community as an acceptable response. They learn the advantages of helping each other in study groups, and they learn how to more confidently prepare for and take exams.

        With this collaborative preparation they realize that an examination process can be more than just memorizing material for the sake of feeding it back to a teacher to get a grade-it can be an authentic and rewarding intellectual experience.

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