KIM NICHOLAS
  • Home
  • About
  • Book
    • UNDER THE SKY WE MAKE
    • Book Seminar
    • Teach UNDER THE SKY WE MAKE
    • Discussion Questions
    • Book Clubs
    • Support the Book
    • Press Kit & Images
    • Request from Local Bookstore/Library
    • How to order outside US/Canada
    • Behind the Scenes
    • If My Book Were Music
  • Research
    • Lab Members
    • Peer-Reviewed Publications
    • Flying Less >
      • The Takeoff of Staying on the Ground
      • Policy Briefs
      • Ingen ny tid för avgång
      • Academics Flying Less
    • Radically Reducing Lund's Emissions
    • Climate Solutions >
      • What Can I Do? 2 >
        • What Can I Do?
        • High School Teaching Materials
        • Fyra klimatsmarta livsstilsval
        • Press Release: 4 Lifestyle Choices That Most Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
        • The Climate Mitigation Gap: Study & Video Abstract
        • Study FAQs
      • Climate Science 101
      • Climate Policy >
        • IPCC Report on 1.5°
        • Kims Klimatval
        • COP21 (Paris Agreement)
      • Farmer adaptation
      • Harnessing biodiversity
    • Climate Education
    • Sustainable Land >
      • Global land use
      • European farming systems
      • Swedish land use
      • Ecosystem Services & OPERAs
      • REDD+
      • Land Acquisitions
    • Sustainable Food >
      • Urban Food Forestry
      • Local food in Iceland
      • One Great Meal
      • Dietary choices & climate change
      • Crop yields & climate
    • Wine, Climate, & Sustainability >
      • Wine & Climate: Impacts & Solutions
      • Wine Diversity for Climate Adaptation
      • Wine yields & quality under climate change
      • Farmer climate adaptation
      • Vineyard ecosystems & landscapes
      • European Wine Case Studies (OPERAs)
    • For Kids (K-12)
  • Writing
    • Newsletter
    • Peer-Reviewed Publications
    • Magazines & Popular Science
    • Blog
  • Speaking
  • Teaching
    • Teaching Overview
    • Climate Change Curriculum
    • We Can Fix It World Cafe >
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2017
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2016
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2015
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2014
    • Courses >
      • Writing for Change >
        • Course Readings
        • Apply
        • Course Information
    • Advice for Students
    • Peer Writing Tutors >
      • Instructions for Peer Tutors
      • Apply to be a writing tutor!
    • Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
    • Early Career
    • R Tutorials >
      • R tutorial 1: Basic calculations and graphs
      • R tutorial 2: Data Visualization
    • Student-Led Exams >
      • Simplified Self Grading
      • DIY Exam Teaching Notes
      • Peer Grading
      • Self Grading
  • Activism
  • Contact

Why I Posted Last Year's Final Exam on the first day of class

9/8/2014

 
I just read a New York Times article (posted by @eric_mazur*) that inspired me to post last year's final exam for my new students on the first day of our Earth Systems Science class. I have always shared last year's final as a teaching tool in the weeks before the exam, because I think it's the best study guide for students to work through it on their own or in small groups as they prepare. (Plus, it removes any possibility for cheating, which could be a temptation if last year's students are expected to keep old exams private after getting them returned.) I post just the exam for a week or so, and then post a compilation of the best student answers from the previous year to give an idea of what an excellent exam would look like. My reasoning is that I want all students who work hard to do well on the exam, and they will do their best if they have a realistic model to work with. After all, the most important thing I'm trying to teach is not facts, but a way of thinking, in particular, using data to support claims; the more exposure students get to this, the better.  

However, this article by Benedict Carey just made me think about exams in a new way- as "learning devices" that can be "the key to studying, rather than the other way around." Psychological research has shown that pretesting can change the way we think, helping to prepare our brains to better receive, process, and hold on to relevant information when it appears. Testing, it turns out, is a powerful way to overcome the "fluency illusion"- thinking that we know something better than we do, because we study it in a vacuum where no competing plausible ideas exist. When presented with challenging competing ideas on a test, we're forced to reason our way through them to show we've really learned. 

The article describes initial research by Elizabeth Ligon Bjork (who heads the fantastically named "Learning and Forgetting Lab" at UCLA) and Nicholas Soderstrom, who presented psychology students with pretests. They found that pretesting increased their final exam scores by 10% (which can be a difference between a grade of C and B in the American grading system, for example). The researchers didn't give their students the final exam on the first day, because they didn't want them to be overwhelmed. I'm not asking my students to sit down and take a 3 hour exam - just posting it for them as a study resource. I hope they find it useful- stay tuned! 

* Walk down memory lane: The first time I learned anything about teaching (the horribly pedagogic-sounding but very important field of pedagogy) was as a "Kindergarten Through Infinity" fellow as a master's student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This was an NSF K-12 program that matched STEM grad students (who brought science content knowledge) with primary and secondary school teachers (who were expert teachers) to design learning activities for students ages 5 through 18. It was here that I first heard about and was inspired by Eric Mazur, the Harvard physics professor who turned his teaching upside-down when he realized his traditional lectures weren't producing deep learning, even for extremely bright students. His solution was the Peer Instruction method. This was the first time I heard about Think-Pair-Share and other teaching techniques I'm still using.   

Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Academia
    Advice
    Agriculture
    Book
    Climate Change
    Conferences
    COP21
    Divestment
    Early Career
    Ecosystem Services
    Grantwriting
    Policy
    Research
    Scicomm
    Teaching
    Wine
    Writing

    Archives

    June 2022
    August 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    July 2018
    January 2018
    November 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014

    RSS Feed


Connect

Picture
Picture

  • Home
  • About
  • Book
    • UNDER THE SKY WE MAKE
    • Book Seminar
    • Teach UNDER THE SKY WE MAKE
    • Discussion Questions
    • Book Clubs
    • Support the Book
    • Press Kit & Images
    • Request from Local Bookstore/Library
    • How to order outside US/Canada
    • Behind the Scenes
    • If My Book Were Music
  • Research
    • Lab Members
    • Peer-Reviewed Publications
    • Flying Less >
      • The Takeoff of Staying on the Ground
      • Policy Briefs
      • Ingen ny tid för avgång
      • Academics Flying Less
    • Radically Reducing Lund's Emissions
    • Climate Solutions >
      • What Can I Do? 2 >
        • What Can I Do?
        • High School Teaching Materials
        • Fyra klimatsmarta livsstilsval
        • Press Release: 4 Lifestyle Choices That Most Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
        • The Climate Mitigation Gap: Study & Video Abstract
        • Study FAQs
      • Climate Science 101
      • Climate Policy >
        • IPCC Report on 1.5°
        • Kims Klimatval
        • COP21 (Paris Agreement)
      • Farmer adaptation
      • Harnessing biodiversity
    • Climate Education
    • Sustainable Land >
      • Global land use
      • European farming systems
      • Swedish land use
      • Ecosystem Services & OPERAs
      • REDD+
      • Land Acquisitions
    • Sustainable Food >
      • Urban Food Forestry
      • Local food in Iceland
      • One Great Meal
      • Dietary choices & climate change
      • Crop yields & climate
    • Wine, Climate, & Sustainability >
      • Wine & Climate: Impacts & Solutions
      • Wine Diversity for Climate Adaptation
      • Wine yields & quality under climate change
      • Farmer climate adaptation
      • Vineyard ecosystems & landscapes
      • European Wine Case Studies (OPERAs)
    • For Kids (K-12)
  • Writing
    • Newsletter
    • Peer-Reviewed Publications
    • Magazines & Popular Science
    • Blog
  • Speaking
  • Teaching
    • Teaching Overview
    • Climate Change Curriculum
    • We Can Fix It World Cafe >
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2017
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2016
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2015
      • We Can Fix It World Cafe 2014
    • Courses >
      • Writing for Change >
        • Course Readings
        • Apply
        • Course Information
    • Advice for Students
    • Peer Writing Tutors >
      • Instructions for Peer Tutors
      • Apply to be a writing tutor!
    • Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
    • Early Career
    • R Tutorials >
      • R tutorial 1: Basic calculations and graphs
      • R tutorial 2: Data Visualization
    • Student-Led Exams >
      • Simplified Self Grading
      • DIY Exam Teaching Notes
      • Peer Grading
      • Self Grading
  • Activism
  • Contact