The function of exams in learning

This posting is rated PR for pedagogical rambling. On a non-specialist boredom rating, this posting could possibly rank 7.

At UL, there are two weeks set aside for final examinations. Most finals count about 50-60% of the final grade, from what I have seen and heard. There is a free ‘reading week’ before the exams, and then one has these two hour exam periods over the course of the next two weeks. So that is about three weeks dedicated to this project. In contrast, at UC, we have one week, bang, right after classes end. Exams at UC are also two hours, but one could have a few, one right after the other. Here they try to space them out more. At UC, I think we focus on just the course content on the exam. Here, you are expected to do outside research to supplement your exam answer. This is actually not specified anywhere in writing, that I have been able to find, but I figured it out by listening to people’s expectations. If it is an unwritten rule, then it must be a cultural rule so that is very interesting. I think in my own classes at UC, I specify in the last week what will be included on the final. Here, half of the lecturers did that.

So I spent last week preparing my exams. I went through all the readings, I read the past exam questions for ideas about what the content would be, and I made topic outlines that included the information from the readings. I then reviewed these notes, re-read my notes from the readings, and memorized specific quotes and dates. I spend a lot of time reading and ‘soaking’ in the information. In my style of learning, I try to make the information a sort of misty atmosphere around my thinking so that when the exact exam question comes up, I am ready to realign what I know to what the exam question is asking. I am also concerned with having the ‘misty atmosphere’ of information feel comfortable in my subconscious because then I feel like I really know it, and, more importantly, I will be able to retrieve it later, I mean much later, like a few months down the line. I know that I do not remember things if I cram them in through a state of high anxiety. I am finding that enough sleep, and a feeling of leisure as I read through the information to assimilated it, rather than memorize it, helps me feel like I really have it. The ‘suck and dump’ strategies never worked for me past the exam. I would remember the information briefly but it wouldn’t stay for later retrieval. It probably helps that I went to lectures and heard about it, and then read about it at a leisurely pace.

Actually, this feeling of leisure and lack of fear seems to make a big difference in retaining exam information. I remember very clearly feeling anxious and uncertain about Big Tests, and I do not remember much about them. On the other hand, the adrenaline rush of fear and loathing resulted in a much greater euphoria when the Threat of the exam was over. I suppose there is something attractive to this emotional roller coaster of crisis and joyful resolution. I am guessing to young sensation junkies, this works for them. My style of leisurely ‘coming into knowing’ is not dramatic, and when the exam is over, it is over. Actually, after the last two, I was sort of sad because I had so much more to say than the two hours permitted. I was also sort of sad not to have copies of what I had written because I think it was interesting. Certainly I could reproduce it, but I am lazy enough that I regret the loss of that great effort I made.

So what has been the function of these exams in my learning. They were a prompt for me to go and read some more on the topics, and I suppose they served as a reward for doing that reading. But if further exploration is the goal of the exam, wouldn’t a proper paper be better where one had time to compose and be more coherent with (theoretically) less time pressure (although I am well aware that many students here write their essays in about the same amount of time it takes to do an exam, with about the same anxiety and fear). So if writing a formal paper and taking an exam both encourage and reward further research, and if they both involve the same amount of emotional stress, what unique learning function does the exam have? I suppose, first, it is an activity of closure. This final burst of expression of knowledge is a final performance of new competence in a compressed and formalized context. Just handing in a formal paper is sort of denouement. Also, one writes the exam without references and just out of one’s head, so it indicates how and in what form a student has internalized the course information. But the stress and anxiety of the exam might result in the ‘suck and dump’ approach to the information, so does a high pressure exam actually demonstrate how much I know in a longitudinal sense, or just how much I know at this single moment in time. Of course, it is just a moment in time, what else could it be unless I was able to give/take exams six months down the line. So I suppose I have to be satisfied with the moment in time. But if I want my students to learn information they can use later, integrate with what they know from other courses, make evaluative and considered judgments, then does the exam help me with that? I don’t think so. I think the paper might do that, but only if I help the students with the ‘leisurely’ part by spreading out the bits of the assignment so they don’t write the blessed thing at the procrastinatory last minute.

Ultimately, I think the final exam may not be an accurate picture of what a student has learned because of the pressure and the anxiety which promotes poor learning strategies and negative emotional contexts that do not promote later retrieval. On the other hand, they do provide formal closure, they help assign grades, and they indicate a student’s skill with in-class pressured writing. I think that learning is more effectively supported by short, repeated performances of knowledge, but the social and political functions of final exams are still important.