Test Anxiety

I'm not having the time of my life this weekend. I have stacks of student papers to grade, I need to figure out my lecture for next week, I have a badly neglected consulting project to work on, and my students have their first exam on Tuesday. I'd planned for this to be a much better weekend. I only have to prepare one lecture instead of two, the exam was finished last week, and I could use the rest. But, instead, I'm anxious about their exam.

I went through this same agony last semester. I suppose I take an exam as a sign of how well I'm teaching, and I don't want to fail. Last semester, I gave my students a study guide that included a list of key terms (people, places, events) and a list of possible essay questions. I learned that my students drove themselves crazy memorizing details about the key terms, completely ignoring historical significance and connections between the terms. In other words, they missed the point.

This semester, I'm trying a different approach. I've posed key questions at the beginning of my lectures and identified specific review questions in the textbook. I've instructed students to study those questions. I've also advised them to learn the material as if they're learning a story, a story about change over time. I've instructed them to fit significant people, places, and events into these stories and into their questions. I didn't provide a list of key terms. I had them do an exercise in class to demonstrate what I meant.

My confidence in this approach sagged when even my good students asked if they needed to know specific people, places, and events. I'm now convinced that they are constructing stories that sound like: First, there were Native Americans. Then, Europeans came. Eventually, they set up colonies that declared independence from Great Britain. They wrote a constitution and pushed Indians west. The end.

Alternatively, because I've basically said to study everything, my best students are driving themselves crazy trying to learn every single little detail about everything in lecture and in the reading. I've told them that I don't aim to trick them and that if they've been in class, taken good notes, and kept up with the reading, they should do fine on the exam. Because it's the first exam, my good students don't trust me or themselves.

Here's the thing: I'm still trying to figure out how to help students study without telling them what's on the exam. I could tell my good students to just study their class notes and they'll be fine - because they've taken good notes. But, the vast majority of my students simply copy my powerpoint slides, even though I've told them that they need to write down more than what's in front of them. When I do powerpoint, I list important terms (people, events, places), but I don't fill in details on the slide. That's what I do in lecture. So, if all you do is copy the slides, you have a list but nothing else. Too many of my students haven't figured this out, or don't care. I put up a slide and they all start writing furiously, not listening to a damn thing that I'm saying and treating me like a distraction. Then, once they're done copying the slide, they sit and daydream until I change the slide when like Pavolv's dog, they start copying again.

I'll be the first to admit that I've lectured too quickly for 3 of my 4 classes and I plan to slow down. I also plan to blatantly emphasize important points. I'm going to stop short of saying, "You need to write this down." I'm also going to fight the urge to give them a list of key terms. The good students will figure out what's on the exam.

In the meantime, I just have to try to buttress my own confidence that some of my students will pass this first exam. Then, on Thursday, I'll have to manage the post-test reaction. I predict sullen faces and a new wave of anxiety in lecture as students try to write down every single word that I say, forgetting that they have a textbook if they miss something in lecture. Maybe one day, I'll get used to this.