Student Scores: More Than Just a NumberBy: Brian Pinney, Ph.D. Educational Specialist Exams and other forms of summative assessment are ubiquitous in higher education for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, students often do not see the value of their exam performance in a proactive manner. Additionally, the exam score itself is rather poor feedback for the student regarding how they can improve or move forward (Wiggins, 2012). It is easy to see exam scores or performance as a fixed entity; something that has already occurred and therefore is of somewhat limited value once the score has been issued and points returned (if applicable). And rest assured, issues with exam scores as feedback for improvement have been known for some time (for example, Crooks, 1933; Linder, 1940). One might think providing comments alongside the exam score might be an appropriate solution. While at least students have meaningful feedback in that situation, common experience of most faculty demonstrates students looking at their score without critically considering the written comments. Not only is this not productive for the student, it can be frustrating for the time investment for the faculty member. Often, students are more concerned with how they did in relation to their peers than the written feedback provided to them by the instructor which is mostly oriented toward preserving well-being at the expense of growth (Wiliam, 2012). This pattern is engrained in students and therefore represents a real challenge to improving.
So what can be done? Work by Carol Dweck has shown students that develop a growth mindset outperform those with a fixed mindset over the long term. Individuals with a growth mindset believe their strategic efforts impact how well they perform in an area (their upper limit changes with what they know and the successful efforts they put in) while those with a fixed mindset believe they perform well in an area because they are intelligent (they are just waiting for find their upper limit). Essentially, she describes developing the lifelong learners that carry their own motivation for learning with them as well as the skills necessary to learn in diverse ways when the situation demands it. To help foster the development of a growth mindset, it is important to acknowledge the work that goes into learning. Just as important, encourage the students that are struggling to develop a plan that includes modification of what they did on the previous exam so there can be real change on the next one. Much of traditional feedback is product-based (“you did well on the exam”) vs. process-based (“you worked really hard there and it paid off”). While this likely comes down to what is visible from what is assumed, when meeting with students it can be helpful to draw parallels to subjects they perform well in as they likely have better work ethic and more effective strategies in those areas. An effective approach can be to go over the exam items missed and look for commonalities. Did they miss mostly questions that required clinical reasoning? Often, this means students did not critically consider examples given in class nor enough practice applying material. What approaches do they have to determine what they know verse what is already known? Essentially, helping students productively move forward and develop as an independent, lifelong learning means helping them see how to move forward and developing this skillset with them. Lastly, another big player that can help develop the intrinsic motivation for students to move toward learning for the sake of learning: developing genuine interest in the area (means you’ll need to see how what you do might be of interest to the student). For anyone interested, I would encourage further reading from Dweck’s article below. References: Dweck, C. (2015). Carol Dweck Revisits the “Growth Mindset”. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset.html on August 15, 2016. Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Educational Leadership. 70(1), 10-16. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx Wiliam, D. (2012). Feedback: Part of a System. Educational Leadership. 70(1), 10-16. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/[email protected].
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May 2017
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