In my previous blog posting, I talked
about the creation of faculty learning communities as a way to generate
conversation about various aspects of teaching/learning/education. At that time, I brought up one of my
favorite topics. If you have read this
blog for long, you are aware that I am a firm believer that the way you test
will strongly influence the way your students learn. If you want to create a different class
environment, you need to test differently.
Therefore, in discussing faculty learning communities, I strongly feel that every
aspect of testing should be a topic of serious conversation by people who want to
become better teachers.
So, today, I have a question for you. I would bet it is a question that you have
never been asked before no matter how long you have taught. And, I would argue that it is a question we
should be asking all the time. In fact,
I think we should have a national contest built around this one question. I believe the answers might well improve
college education (which is not a small statement to make).
Here’s the question. Think before you answer.
Whether you teach history, political science, math, accounting, or the like, in your testing during the past semester
(or academic year), what was the very best question you asked your class on a
test? If testing matters so much, then
we should all have some really good questions that we are especially proud of
having written. Why did you feel that
particular question was so good?
Excellent test questions set the tone for
your class: this is what I consider
important, this is the way I want you to learn, this is the kind of thinking
you should be doing, this is what I want from you rather than memorization. Students need guidance – nothing guides them
quite like what they believe will be on the tests.
Okay, so what was my best question for the
past semester? As most readers of this
blog probably know, I teach accounting at the Robins School of Business at the
University of Richmond. We have very
bright students who are willing to do as much or as little as you ask of
them. It is all about asking. In testing, I want them to know that I am
going to ask them for a lot of serious thinking.
One of my courses is Intermediate
Accounting II. Most of my students
believe that accounting is basically the memorization of set rules that they
must apply to particular situations.
Many of them are left-brained and love the comfort of those rules. They are not necessarily happy that I want
them to think outside of the box.
However, my experience has been that, in
real life, accountants are thrown into odd situations almost every day and must
use all of their brain cells to figure out what is going on so that they can
determine what response is needed.
You can learn the rules for being a
medical doctor but the actual application is much more stressful (and interesting).
On my first test this past semester, I
wanted to break the students away from the memorization of rules. So, when they opened the test, they
discovered that they had an accounting client on the planet Kryptoplasm. The businesses on that planet use a unique
set of accounting rules (referred to as Krypto-GAAP). I then presented a variety of situations and
described the basic rules found in Krypto-GAAP.
I then asked the students to determine the impact of converting the
financial statements prepared on that planet into financial statements that
could be used in the US (based on US GAAP).
For each situation, they had to tell if reported net income would go up
or down, whether the reported liabilities would go up or down, and so on.
The students had never seen anything like
this which is what I wanted.
What was I trying to accomplish?
--I wanted the students to read the questions carefully. They could not anticipate the accounting rules on the other planet so they had to read the words and think about what those people were doing. I think the ability to read and think through what you are being told is vitally important in solving problems.
--I wanted to downplay the importance of
memorization. No matter what you tell a
student they will believe that they can prosper by memorizing everything you
have said. I wanted no questions that
simply asked them to replicate a mechanical rule.
--I wanted them to make judgments as to which
rules should have been applied. By
describing the weird things that were happening on this planet, they had to
step back and think about how those events should be reported. The problem was more than just manipulating
numbers.
--Despite being set on a faraway planet, I
wanted the students to be placed in a real life situation. Having a client do weird things is no
stretch of the imagination. Too many
tests have nothing to do with real life and reinforce the student’s suspicions
that college classes are just student exercises.
Did I like the results?
Yes, in fact, I liked this question so very well that my second test used the same format (without warning the students).
Yes, in fact, the standard joke in my classes
quickly came to be “what would they do in Krypto-GAAP?” which alerted the
students to the fact that accounting rules are not set in stone but simply
selected at a point in time and place as the most appropriate method.
Did the test question work? I have no hard data but I do know that I had
a really good semester in Intermediate Accounting II. My students quickly came to be open to
talking about accounting in interesting and theoretical ways. We learned the rules but we didn’t become
obsessed with the rules. I think one of
the major reasons why the semester went so well was because of the message that
I sent out in that first test (and then followed up on in the second test). This question helped show the students the
kind of thinking I wanted them to be able to do. The way you test is the way they will learn.
So, what was your best question of the
past semester?
