The reading for this week was interesting to read about since I never knew so much went on ‘behind the scenes’ of testing. However, being a graduate teaching assistant of public speaking at NDSU doesn’t allow me to apply any of these strategies, or at least not yet.

In the communication department, we do not have the option to set up our own exams. All of our questions are planned ahead of time by a particular group of graduate students and are limited to multiple choice or true and false. I would prefer an exam that involved essay questions because I believe that the test taker has to apply more knowledge to them rather than answering a variety of basic questions that are straight out of the textbook.

Going back to what McKeachie had to say about types of testing though, it was brought to my attention about how many types of testing could possibly be done. I have never heard of ‘graphic representations of concepts’. I am interested to know what field of study this particular type of ‘testing’ would apply to because I do not see how it could be used in the communication field.

I am not disagreeing with what McKeachie had to say about alternate methods of testing, it is that most of them do not work in the field of communication, or at least not that I can see. Maybe someone else would have some good examples.
With that, I do not have any options with administering the exam to my class. Everything is pre-planned from review dates, exam dates, and the format that the exam is to be in. There is also no room for us to have our own grading procedures for the exam.

I found the section on ‘returning test papers’ very useful. McKeachie provided good information as to why handing them back and going over them in class can be useful to the student and help them learn from their mistakes. Looking back at my own experiences with exams, I also preferred covering the material in class afterwards, especially if it was going to be on a final exam. I am hoping that I will have the opportunity to present the students back their exams so they can see for themselves what areas they did well on and which areas they need at.

Another concept that McKeachie focused on was ‘reducing student frustration and aggression’. I enjoyed reading the bit of this that was there because I have never really thought much about it and I believe that professors should use strategies and provide guidance about tests more often. I found it interesting that those who wrote comments on their exam in the extra space provided resulted in those students having higher scores. Taking the time do read through everyones comments as to why they feel what answer is best would be quite time consuming, but I do think that it would be very beneficial and would like to test this out sometime in a class that I teach. I could see this working in public speaking because so many students in my classes right now feel the need to contradict many particular points that I make so it would be interesting to see what they would write on their exams if they felt as though the answer should be different than what has proposed.