Jill Maschio, PhD
May 28, 2023
The start of each term classrooms in colleges and universities across America fill up with new and returning students. They are looking ahead to fulfilling their dreams of having a great career. Yet, year-after-year, educators scratch their heads as to why so many of their students don’t pass exams. We must question why the school systems are failing students. In America, many colleges have high enrollment but poor graduation rates, which there are a number of reasons for that – mostly because students struggle to learn.
Arum and Roksa (2001) conducted an experiment with 2,322 traditional-age students in the USA from the fall of 2005 to the spring of 2009. They showed that a whopping 45% of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning, or writing skills during the first two years of college. After four years, 36% made no significant gains in so-called higher-order thinking skills. If the guiding norm is for faculty to quiz students for their knowledge, then the educational systems will sadly continue to fail students.
Marcus (2018) stated that colleges and universities have yet to figure out what exactly students are learning from their education, nor do they report what students learn. If we want to get real about education and why the system is failing students, then it is time once again to consider the curriculum strategy that is widely used in the educational system. I argue in this blog that the traditional teaching method of lecture followed by exam, then wash, rinse, and repeat does not produce meaningful learning.
The Issue with Learning Outcomes
Some higher educational systems are required to use state provided learning outcomes. I argue that the learning outcomes have issues. Not only are the outcomes often outdated, but they can be vague. They are written with verbs, such as identify, describe, or explain a concept. Then, when assessing student achievement, institutions link those outcomes to showing how well students can communicate or think critically, or some other skill. What happens is the exams or form of assessment does not fully align with the institution’s learning outcomes nor do they show how a student has learned or mastered the content or subject matter. Institutions are so focused on having students achieve skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication, research methods, and teamwork and community service, that they fail to focus on students learning the material or there are so many learning outcomes per course making it very challenging for the educator and students to achieve. Student panic because of all the learning outcomes they must study for and achieve and educators are overwhelmed by it all.
I have witnessed the many complaints by students having too many assessments. I helped assist when a professor was trying to help a student who was having an emotional breakdown due to the pressure from all the assessing in which the college failed to take it as a sign for needed change. When colleges put too much pressure on assessing, students will withdrawal from the courses with the most assessments so that they could focus on the courses that were more doable, with fewer assessments and learning outcomes. The educators learn that they can’t do it all and will teach strictly to the learning outcomes that they must assess. This creates a whole new problem for the students. For the social sciences, understanding the concepts is paramount so that students can take that knowledge and apply it in the real world and at their jobs. By teaching strictly to the learning outcomes, it creates gaps in the content that is taught to students. Being aware of these issues can help you determine a better approach to assessing, especially when assessing for the institution’s purpose to collect data and analyze it.
Time for Change
To help students fully understand the content of individual courses, then the tradition of lecturing followed by an exam must change. So, what are educators to do? Take a lesson from online universities. I earned three degrees fully online – two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. It is from my experience as a
student and as an educator at secondary educational institutions for over 14 years that quizzes do not lead to learning. I was never much of a test-taker myself, and when I attended college online, I could count the number of courses that had quizzes on one hand. I was relieved, but hindsight, I am confident
that I learned so much more because of my experience. Each class was packed full of writing assignments, and those assignments required students to write about how concepts and theories work. I was required to “dive” into the research and discuss topics within my field of study. Because the assignments had a clear and specific purpose and writing requirements, I learned quickly how to look at the research and use that to explain assignment questions. Before long, I gained valuable skills as a result. I am a strong critical thinker – and my colleagues gave me the nickname of the critical thinker. Not many people might be as proud of that as I am. Hindsight, I now understand how writing and researching enhances learning, because doing it involves activating brain cells for a longer period of time then simply trying to memorize a concept, for example. It increases the chances that the information will be consolidated into long-term memories.
My message is for faculty to throw out the quizzes and exams and have students get out a pen and paper (or their computers) and locate research and use it to write about topics that are complex. This will help ensure that information is processed more deeply. There is no way around the value that grows as a result of researching and writing. Students are developing important skills, such as researching, analyzing, evaluating, problem solving, and critical thinking as a result. Students are having to read, and all these things produce independent thinkers – that is what is demanded in jobs, and we are in desperate need of today.
When assessing for the purpose of gathering data for your institution, make sure that the assessment measures what it is supposed to measure, and advocate for students to learn content.
- In my courses at EvolvingIntellect.com, I teach effective assessment and curriculum development based on neuroscience. This type of teaching method has been shown to be more successful than traditional teaching methods.
References
Arum, R. & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
Marcus, J. (2018, September 17). As students return to college, a basic question persists: What are they learning? https://hechingerreport.org/as-students-return-to-college-a-basic-question-persists-what-are-they-learning/
