Thread by @mikamckinnon

Q: Ok, phew, class is online & quasi-functional. But isn’t social distancing during pandemic going to destroy the integrity of exams?!

A: Congrats! Let’s talk assessment strategies.

Are you ready for applied pedagogical philosophy?
What if I add gratuitous hedgehogs? 🦔

https://twitter.com/mikamckinnon/status/1237572421441302528

Learning management systems (LMS) have all sorts of “security” features like IP locks.

They’re all extremely glitchy, fail more with crap internet & older hardware, and are trivial to circumvent. Let it go.

We all know m learning is remembering just enough to recognize a situation & look up the details to re-teach yourself later.

What ideas do you want sunk so deeply in your students’ souls that years from now they’ll stumble onto a situation & reference their notes?

From Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, we can immediately toss any knowledge/remember questions for online exams.

Google is RIGHT THERE. And the class slides! It’s straight up find-copy-paste.

So start your questions at applications & head up the triangle.

You can fight it, but assessments will be more fair if you accept that they’re Take Home / Open Note.

Sace yourself the headache of draconian yet ineffective anti-cheating measures & aim for an exam that requires too much thinking to cheat.

My evergreen fav questions:

Compare & contrast x & y, then give a justification for which is the better option in z conditions

Evaluate x scenario, identify y key criteria/factors, and propose a design/survey/investigation to address z

Analyze current event x using xyz

Warning:
Grading higher-level conceptual questions is a far more exhausting. It’s too easy to write questions you dread grading.

ProTip I wish I followed more often:
Write a detailed grading rubric & answers in advance, tweaking questions if it’ll be miserable grading.

If you haven’t done it yet, survey your students on their internet access & available tech.

Think about how someone with phone-only access will take your exams.

Think about non-internet contact info for if their low-speed internet glitches mid-test.

If you haven’t done it yet, check any accessibility requirements for your students and ensure they’re applied to assessments.

Yes, you can set extended time on a student-by-student basis.

Yes, you can add image descriptions.

Yes, you can add closed captions.

Time limits are a bit weirder with open book exams.

You expect higher-quality answers.

Thinking is harder than regurgitating.

Referencing notes can easily become a test of speed-reading or unfairly punish physical CD digital notes.

Exams are technically an assessment, but also a study-motivator and aid.

You can sidestep a lot of problems by setting absurdly long test windows or providing questions in advance. You’ve already written questions that thwart “Look up the answer.”

Mechanics tip:

Set the LMS to allow all students 2 attempts by default. This provides resiliency for any glitches, bugs, internet hiccups, misclicks, blah blah blah that come up all the time.

Just... avoid all that noise.

Run a low-stakes practice exam to give you & students a chance to get accustomed to the format.

ProTip:
1. Ask a question checking in on them.

2. Ask for something fun like a song or meme or photo.

Errata:
I owe you a hedgehog for not including one with Blooms taxonomy triangles. Here you go.

That stray m fell off my name.

Sub in *save for sace.

Q: How do I know it’s my students taking the test, not friends/relatives/hired help?

A: Tech solutions are expensive & invasive (& often break privacy protections if you teach outside the US), or...

You can treat your students like responsible adults.

Add an integrity pledge. Like eyes on the honour jar in the coffee room, it helps.

If it’s a small class, supplement with a quick oral exam justifying their answer for 1-2 questions.

If it’s a huge class, include a stage 2 group exam. Add peer evaluation for random groups.