Teaching to the Test?

Recently, I had the opportunity teach an entry-level AutoCAD class at an organization that provided, and required its instructors to use, the course’s final examination.  This was a new experience for me, as I had always enjoyed a certain amount of academic autonomy when it came to student assessment.   As I examined the exam, I was struck by how much material was being tested, and by how “vocabulary-heavy” the test was.   My tendency is to not put the primary focus on vocabulary, choosing instead to teach from concept, to application, and finally to vocabulary.  As such, my assessments typically focus more on testing the student’s conceptual and practical understanding of the material, and not on the students’ knowledge of terms.  This allows the vocabulary, which is vital to the student’s ability to work with the software, to be rooted in something concrete.  The final projects that I assign are designed to help the student develop his or her drafting process, and to discover how well the student can navigate the software.

The problem facing me revolved around finding a way to cover the material on the test in an effective and meaningful way that led to a better understanding of the material, while preparing them to take the mandated final exam.  The more I considered how to approach the class however, the clearer it was becoming that the final test was becoming the driving force the development of my lesson plan.

When I discussed the situation with friends and colleagues in and out of academia, the response was universal: that I was planning to “teach to the test.”  This stopped me in my tracks and made me step back.  Was that what I was doing?  Could I really be doing the unthinkable and performing the dastardly act of “teaching to the test”?  I decided that before I could move forward, I had to determine if this was true,, and for me that meant that I had to first develop a working definition for the  phrase “teaching to the test.”

When I hear the phrase “teaching to the test,” I interpret it as follows:  A situation where an educator is:  A) determining what material to present to the class based on the final test, and B), is presenting that material without a great deal of concern for whether the students leave the class with a high degree of understanding.

Defined in this way, this is something to be avoided.  But, what if you were carrying out the first part of the definition stated above, but not the second.  Certainly a distinction needs to be made between the definition given above and using the exam to determine what material to cover.  If not, then any teacher who is required to cover material on a standardized test could be painted with this broad, and often derogatory, brush.  There has to be a way to use the test as a basis for the lesson plan, while still teaching with understanding.

Now, a blog devoted to the dissemination of Problem Based Case Learning (PBCL) may seem like an odd place to start this discussion, but to me it seems like the perfect forum.  For those of us who prefer a learning environment that is contextual and problem based, the question of implementing assessment protocols that meet the requirements of district or government standards is of major import.  Furthermore, if we want more people to adopt PBCL or PBL strategies, we will have to find ways to work within the parameters set by administrations that are more comfortable with, and therefore, more inclined to rely on some kind of standardized test as the primary form of summative assessment.

So the question remains, “how can we take pre-defined exams and use them as the basis for curriculum without teaching in a way that emphasizes rote memorization, and that allows for and encourages a high level of understanding, while still preparing for the exam”?   To answer this question I went back to the final exam.   I needed to determine to determine whether the questions being asked were good ones, and by extension, if I felt that the material that I was being asked to cover was relevant.  Admittedly, I did not have a choice as to whether or not I was going to give the test, but I needed to know if I could stand behind the test.   As I analyzed the final exam more closely, it became clear that the questions were valid and were based on concepts that I felt should be covered in an introductory CAD class I would have preferred giving tests that use the short answer format rather than multiple-choice questions, but at least I could move forward with faith in what I was being asked to cover.

Bolstered by this newfound confidence in the material, I then needed to determine how I was going to present the material to the class in a way that would allow them to absorb the information, apply it effectively, and prepare them to take the exam.  Given the large amount of content I needed to cover, and the fact that the class periods were strictly divided into lecture and lab sections, this was not an easy task.  What follows is an outline of the process I developed.

• LECTURE:

I used the lecture section of the class to cover the parts of the specific chapter(s) being covered that I found the most useful when I was drafting professionally.   By focusing on these “highpoints,” I was able to “cut through the chaff,” as it were, and give some focus to the text. Books devoted to teaching technical material are by their very nature heavy with jargon and vocabulary.  Therefore, it can often be difficult to differentiate between what is essential, what is important, what is interesting, and finally what is irrelevant.  This can be especially true if you are new to the material.

My goal when I lecture is to engage the students in a discussion about the material, rather than give a recitation of the material.  To do this, I pose a situation and ask the students to tell me what needs to happen.  To be clear about this; I am not asking them to tell me HOW to do something, but to identify WHAT needs to be done.  Once they know what the point is, I show them the tools that the software offers to help them solve the problem.

• HOMEWORK:

The homework was assigned to give the students a way to delve deeper into the material I was covering in the chapters and lectures, while also reinforcing the vocabulary that I knew would be on the final exam.  I was lucky in that the text we were using supplied three exercises (multiple choice, matching, and true/false questions,) that when assigned together, reinforced that material covered in the corresponding chapters by asking questions about the material from different pints of view.

• QUIZZES:

The quizzes served a two-fold purpose.  The first was to reinforce the material covered in the homework assignments.  The second purpose was to get them used to the format of the final exam.  Over the course of an 11-week quarter, I was able to give ten, ten question quizzes that replicated the structure of the final exam.  Half of the questions were taken from the lectures and homework assignments while the other half were taken from the final exam, tough they were re-worded slightly.  Over the course of the quarter, the students were given 100 questions, and buried within those questions were the 50 questions similar to the ones that would be found on the final.  This allowed me to reinforce the material while also familiarizing the students to the format of the final exam.

• LABS:

The labs were designed to allow the students to work their way through drawing projects that would give them opportunities to get practical experience with the software.  The labs fell into two categories.  The first walked the student through a step-by-step process.  The second were project based that gave the students the opportunity to implement their own solutions as they went about drawing the various projects.  Both types of labs serve a purpose, though the value of the step-by-step “recipe” type was short lived.  Within two weeks or so, the students have started to develop their own ideas about how they want to proceed.  This is the point at which the projects that gave them the freedom to explore the software on their terms, and make their own assessments regarding the validity and usefulness of those choices.

During the labs, the process used in the lectures of having them determine what needed to happen and then associating an action to that need was reinforced.  In the labs, I emphasized the importance of developing some kind of assessment process that would allow them to determine how well their choices worked.  Here is a broad stroke outline of the process I wanted them to develop:

• Determining the desired goal,
• Identify what would constitute success,
• Identifying a course of action,
• Predicting the outcome,
  • This was critical.  I wanted them to get used to the idea of picturing what they thought would happen at every stage, and then compare that vision to what actually happened.  The goal was not to be right every time, but to get them to visualize the entire process.  The more clearly and definitively they could picture the predicted outcome, the sooner they would know whether or not it worked.
• Implementing the course of action, and then
• Assessing the results by asking questions like:
  • Does it look like you thought it would,
  • Does it look like it is supposed to look,
  • What would you do differently,
  • Which tools worked like you expected them to,
  • Which tools would you never use again,

Whether the outcomes matched the goals stated at the beginning of the exercise, the assessment protocol was essential the same.  At each stage of the project, I pushed the students to get used to the process of performing this type of simple assessment.   The goal of these “in-process” assessments was to get the students used to simply considering the questions, “what worked and why?”

The concept of “in-process” assessment was reinforced throughout both the lectures and the labs, by prompting the students to tell me why they chose this or that tool, and then asking them to explain what the upside or downside of those choices were.  I would often ask them to describe alternate choices that they could have used to produce the desired effects.  Here again, a key to making this process successful was to push them to get comfortable with the process of making predictions about what the effects of any given action might be.  Make a choice, predict the outcome, and then determine whether the outcomes meet the needs of the situation.

As educators, we may find ourselves working in situations where we have to follow protocols we are not familiar or comfortable with.  But even in these situations, our mission to implement pedagogies that are in accordance with our beliefs regarding what we consider to the most beneficial ways to prepare our students does not diminish.  In fact, these situations may give us the opportunity to identify what those beliefs and core principles are.

In the end, this process lead me to realize that teaching with understanding is something that can be accomplished even when I cannot control every aspect of the environment, including the form that the final assessment takes.  What follows below is an outline of how I approached the development of creating a lesson plan for this class.

1. Determine if the questions on the test are valid,
2. Construct a lesson plan that covers the material to be tested,
3. Give lectures that are designed to highlight the essential parts of the material,
4. Assign homework that emphasize the vocabulary and let’s the students delve deeper into the material,
5. Give quizzes that reinforce the vocabulary content, while also increasing the students comfort level with the format of the final exam, and
6. Develop labs that reinforce the important points, and that test for understanding and that reinforce the more practical nature of the material.

This list is not offered to suggest that this is the only solution to this problem, but instead to show how I was able to integrate my teaching style when presented with an educational paradigm that was new to me.  I believe that to be successful, it is essential that educators be able identify the concepts that are the most important to them, and to then find strategies that will allow them to teach in accordance with those ideals.   This experience afforded me the opportunity to do just that.