Preparing Students for the Mid-Term

One of the biggest challenges instructors in college run into is students complaining that they did not understand the expectations or parameters of an assignment. If you didn't say it, the story goes, it's not fair to grade them on it. While I don't fully back the students on this, I was an undergraduate once, too, and to some extent I sympathize.

For the first time in their lives, their days are not fully structured. Their instructors are not giving them study guides. Their reading must all be done outside of class. They don't have a study hall structured into their day for 70 minutes. They have tremendous freedom, but that time may be spent making a Gangnam Style parody video instead of preparing for their group presentation.

Okay. The point is, there might be a grain of reasonableness in their complaint. This is a post about how to acknowledge that grain of reasonableness and do your part to prep them.

1) Know roughly what your exam will look like early.

If you decide to assemble your exam three or four days ahead of time, you'll hate your life. First of all, you'll go into the test bank of questions and realize: Oh, no, these are all incredibly precise questions about terms from the chapters! Okay, you'll rationalize, I've been reminding them to read all semester. But still, there'll be this bit of guilt and uncertainty on your end, and a potential mutiny on their end. There are a million terms and concepts in the first ten chapters, and the majority of class time is devoted to activities designed to more deeply cultivate their understanding of particular key concepts. You need to think about what you're going to test in advance so you can at least help guide students' focus. You also need some idea of the format of the exam in advance, so you can give them a semblance of what to look for on it.

2) Write some exam questions after class.

When you get done teaching and walk back to your office, think about what you covered or recapped that day. Think about tricky concepts you clarified. Then, write a few test questions (or adapt a few from the test bank book) that you know fit with what you discussed. That way, you'll know that you definitely did address the material in some capacity when you test them on it later.

3) Or, write a quiz.

Put together a short quiz, worth low stakes, that is part of the students' participation grade. Base it on the reading before that day of class. Give it to them sort of abruptly, just to keep them on their toes. Make the quiz mirror the format of your exam, and tell them that it does. This should put the fear of God into them and make sure they stay on top of the reading. (Remember, you're battling the perception that the reading does not matter!)

4) Prep them on constructed response answers.

The thing about open-ended questions is that students can write anything. This is good; that means they can't just make a guess based on the four possible answers available. It also is good because they have to apply what they have learned, synthesize ideas, and do other more complex critical thinking stuff. But it's problematic if you do not give them some sense of what you are grading on.

Preparing them for this is as simple as creating an example constructed-response question and a sample answer, and dissecting the answer for them to go over the main components you're looking for. I did this in my class, and provided students a PowerPoint slide of some of my key expectations:

5) And yes, give them some heads up about content.

I give students at least some idea of what concepts will be covered. I know, I know. On Facebook I'm kvetching about them giving the question topics to presidential candidates in advance because that allows them to study specific topics and talking points and completely throw out others. But our students aren't running for president (thank God). They're preparing for one of several tests, and we're not the only instructors throwing a ton of content at them, telling them to synthesize it themselves from ten chapters of a fairly dense textbook, and having them go forth. Remember that they mostly have four other classes doing the same thing. We need to give at least a little guidance.

For me, that meant a PowerPoint slide (which I posted on ELMS--I didn't make them copy this whole thing, that'd be sadistic). I specifically told them, for the constructed response questions, what concepts they would need to apply from their viewing of the movie 12 Angry Men. This lets them know what to look for and take notes on. They don't know the actual questions in advance, but they at least know what they will need to write about, which--given that these students did have pretty solid GPAs in high school and ACT/SAT scores to get in here--should be sufficient to prepare them for the test.

6) Set expectations for the review day.

Require each student to bring a question for review day. Make it a participation grade. One thing that they don't understand. Forcing students to hunt for a topic that's too complicated for them to get it on their own is a good way to ensure that they gain at least a passing familiarity with a large subset of the chapters. Set it up so that their questions and thoughts facilitate the review, and then in the latter part of the class hit the important concepts that you're surprised nobody asked about.

7) Use the group presentations as exam question fodder.

A great way to get the student groups to pay attention to each other is to tell them that some of the content their classmates are covering in their presentations will show up on the exam. (The presentations are based on concepts from Chapters 1-10 anyway, so this just helps you with that process of focusing). This saves you some effort in that it helps you decide on five or six things to test them on; it gives them an incentive to support one another.

8) Set up the exam as an "attainable challenge."

Be straight up honest that it's going to be hard, and they need to study. They're at a great university; they should expect to take hard tests that don't just look at their conceptual knowledge, but also at their ability to apply and synthesize that knowledge. Tell them you make it hard because you believe they can do it, and that you've given them the tools they need to succeed on it. Now they simply need to meet you half way.