Deciding to Use Exams to Test Student Learning

I’m using exams for Spring 2025. It’s the first time doing so since maybe 2018, and I’m feeling guilty about it.

My decision for using exams this time around is based on a two-fold assumption I have that doing so will 1) make things harder on students and 2) will help structure the semester.

 

To understand my ambivalence about exams, you have to understand my hatred of grading. Part of this hatred is the laudable Foucauldian concern of judging and evaluating humans on a homogenous scale. It is absurd and dehumanizing to measure humans using a common tool of evaluation. But the main part of my hatred of grading is that I simply hate doing it. It is to teaching what taping and trim work is to painting a bedroom. I would rather not do it. 

 

Over the past few years, I have outsourced grading to students. I’ve ask them to design their own rubrics for achievement, then use those same rubrics to evaluate themselves. Or maybe they decide how their grades will be calculated (attendance + quizzes + a presentation), then I go through and crunch the numbers. This latter method is more tedious, and I still get students who want to argue about their grades even though they were the ones who decided how to calculate it.

 

I really do like the idea of students grading themselves at midterm and finals. The only problem I run into is that it is too easy to change the curriculum every day. Say the topic is “History of Psychology” and the students have selected 20 psychologists to explore. The novelty wears off by week 10, and students are more interested in, say, Mesmerism or introspection. Or they’re more interested in staying home. Student designed courses lack a structure within which to work. Exams provide structure. They’re limiting, of course, because they outline the parameters of what a course can cover, but these parameters also provide some comfort that we won’t wind up doing, say, Dream Analysis on a random Tuesday. Students don’t know what to expect, and I wind up writing new lesson plans, activities, and so on all semester long. I used to be able to do this, but my skills in the regard have been on the decline, which leads to a lot of sub-par activities. This is why I decided to plan the entire semester from the beginning. That way I could be prepared with activities without having to make them up as I go. 

 

It also meant writing exams for my courses. But how do I write exams that aren't a breeze to cheat on?