Why I Don’t Give Exams (And What I Use Instead)
I walk into the classroom ahead of schedule and find a seat that isn’t adjacent to another student. I’ve got time, so I quickly pull out my notes to scan and hopefully internalize before it’s go time. After a couple minutes, that time is now. I quickly stow everything in my backpack as I’m given a face-down and thicker-than-expected stack of stapled pages. In unison, we all flip them over and begin scrabbling our names and whatever responses we can muster in the next 50 minutes under the watchful eye of our instructor. It’s exam day, and this is the primary way I can demonstrate my learning in the course.
This is the experience I had in my undergraduate STEM classes, and one that continues to this day for many students across all levels of education. I was able to find a way to succeed in this system, but what did that success really mean? I was able to recall information from hours spent studying (read: memorizing) lecture slides and notes, but did that really represent learning? Nope. Throughout my biochemistry degree, my most impactful moments of learning came from hands-on experiences in the lab, diving into primary literature for class discussions, and other forms of assessment that centered on the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (analysis, evaluation, synthesis). Despite these wonderful learning opportunities, a large proportion of my grades focused on my performance on timed in-class exams.
As a college professor who has gone gradeless in favor of a labor-based approach, I’ve moved away from exams entirely. They simply do not support the learning goals of my courses, whether they’re at the introductory or 300 level. I believe the overall goal of education should be to develop self-motivated and curiosity-driven lifelong learners, and exams simply do not prepare students for a rewarding intellectual life outside of a classroom. Below I describe what I view to be the three major problems with the commonly used closed-note timed exams, and then I share the alternative approaches I use to address these specific shortcomings.
Exams are too infrequent
In a typical semester, exam-focused STEM courses usually have a test every 3-4 weeks with a final at the end of the term. This just isn’t enough of an opportunity to demonstrate one’s learning. In fairness, some courses may also have weekly quizzes or other mechanisms to assess current understanding, which is a big improvement. But they often carry considerably lower weights relative to the exams and may be limited in what they can assess. I’ve also observed that exam-focused courses lead to irregular patterns of learning and engagement. Here students’ understanding peaks during the days leading up to an exam due to concentrated studying efforts, followed by a major valley before the next exam. Sporadic engagement is an inefficient way to learn in any field, so it comes as no surprise when students’ claim they “forget everything after the exam.”
Exams are stressful
Exams are nearly synonymous with stress when I hear students discuss them. It could be the looming anxiety of preparing for an upcoming exam or the dreading of getting the results back. This stress can be attributed to the considerable weight given to each exam, the unknown of what may be on the exam, the time limit, or the pressure to perform under the proctor’s watchful eyes. Test anxiety is frequently discussed at many levels of education, where it is estimated that 15-22% of students display it at high levels. Further, many reports also describe the physiological activation of the sympathetic nervous system, better known as the “fight-or-flight” response, during exams. Should our students react to an exam period with the same physiological response as an encounter with a protective mama bear in the woods?
Exams are unrealistic
I can’t think of any career that involves taking a timed exam every 3-4 weeks, filled with a mixture of multiple choice and short answer questions. Can you? Yet test-taking abilities are often prioritized and rewarded in education. Even when I gave exams, those weren’t skills I ever highlighted in the letters of recommendations I wrote for my students. Further, why ask students to memorize and recall knowledge that can now be readily delivered to the palm of their hand in the Information Age? Even when exams include more in-depth questions with elaborate details to try and emulate real-world scenarios, students must attempt these problems without referring to their own resources or communicating with others, which is decidedly unrealistic.
So, what do I do instead of giving exams?
Overall, my pedagogical approach tries to remedy many aspects of the three issues described above. Effective learning corresponds to consistent engagement. So, I ask my students to regularly engage with low-stakes and varied learning opportunities throughout the semester. As I review and give frequent feedback on student work, it helps me identify potential confusions much earlier than if I used an infrequent exam schedule. A steady flow of assessment information leads to more fruitful office meetings, prompts important concept reviews in class, and allows me to adapt my teaching approach more rapidly. Additionally, spreading out or scaffolding the assignments not only helps in reducing procrastinatory habits, but also represents a more natural and efficient way to learn.
Entomology Syllabus
My students report lower levels of stress than their other STEM courses, largely a consequence of my use of labor-based grading. Here, full credit is earned on each assignment when it reflects sufficient levels of effort and engagement, regardless of whether it was fully correct. Students often share with me that they are surprised at how much they are learning without the stress of exams and the pressure to “be correct” on their assignments. My favorite outcome is that students feel free to take risks and pursue their curiosities, uninhibited by the fear of getting a suboptimal grade. They have permission to go “off-syllabus” on several assignments because they have the bandwidth to be genuinely curious. This is in direct opposition to the age-old question of “Will this be on the exam?”, which has the effect of reducing the field to only the major concepts. But I love when students go out and independently find the extreme cases, the exceptions to the rules, the truly astounding biological phenomena. And many times, this freedom to explore comes back into our learning community in various ways, a sort of “boomerang effect” if you will. Nothing makes me happier than a student contributing to our class discussion with “From my last Reading Reflection…” and then sharing their own amazing learning journey with the class.
By stepping away from these unrealistic aspects of exams, more varied assessments can be used to evaluate student learning. And these can be designed to represent different facets of actual careers in related fields. To some, these varied assessments can be jarring in their departure from the tradition of exams in STEM. But in practice, I find these assignments make for deeper learning opportunities and develop important skills needed in STEM careers and beyond. Instead of exams, below are a few types of assignments I use in my courses:
Group and Take-Home Problem Sets
These problems are often similar to ones found on short answer sections of exams. They are inspired by real biological phenomena, involve experimental design and data analysis, and mirror the integrative and complex nature of my best exam questions (from back in the day!). The difference? Now students have the opportunity to sit and engage fully with the question before answering it. They can consult with members of their group and/or navigate the wealth of information available to them as they synthesize their own answer, instead of having to rush to put words on paper from memory that will earn the most partial credit on the exam.
Reading Reflections
A writing-to-learn assignment, students are asked to reflect on readings for the course and make connections to their own life experience or interests. Students often use this space to pursue their curiosity with additional research and reading, a key skill in developing new research questions and understanding the larger context of a topic. Students are innately curious to make deeper connections with the material of the course, and this is a space where students are encouraged to do so (and they get credit for it!).
Interview a Biologist Project
The overwhelming majority of biologists highlighted in introductory textbooks are white males, given the long history of oppression and barriers in science. To highlight the diversity in modern biology, this project has students select a biologist to interview, prepare questions, and create a Biologist Profile that is then shared with the class. The greatest outcome is that students often select biologists that share one or more of their identities, and some of these relationships continue after the end of the project!
Poké Pop-up Museum
Science Communication and Outreach Projects
This is a catch-all for various types of assignments that center around sharing scientific insights to experts, non-experts, or both. Breaking down complex research and effectively communicating it to various audiences is an invaluable skill for many scientific fields. These assignments have taken the form of review articles and grant proposals (expert audiences), scientific journalism articles and infographics (non-experts), and even a Pokémon themed Pop-Up Museum in collaboration with another course and Cosplay for Science (community outreach, see more here!).
Poké Pop-up Museum
My shift away from timed exams, the unfortunate standard in STEM, has caused me to really change my educational perspective. My mindset with these assignments is more “show me what you know or are curious about” rather than “let’s find what you don’t know.” As I continue to move away from a deficiency mindset, my students have more ownership and agency in the learning process. And the students rise to the occasion! The following student’s comment echoes what many have said in both course evaluations and personal discussions, and it brings me immeasurable joy when I witness students getting reinvigorated about taking charge of their own learning again…and delighting in it:
This course was set up to focus more on students' intrinsic motivation to learn, which I loved. I feel like I learned a lot more through the labor-intensive assignments than I would have if I just had quizzes and tests all the time... Though the course was focused away from grades, I put the most effort into this class than any of my other classes.
- Anonymous student on a course evaluation
I do acknowledge that many of the above teaching approaches are possible because of course design autonomy and smaller class sizes. But many talented educators at all levels, a community I continue to learn from, are finding creative and effective ways to reduce or depart from an exam-focused teaching model. And I hope you experience the same joy and freedom I’ve experienced in eschewing exams from your courses!
Greg Pask is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT. His pedagogy centers around making STEM education more inclusive, accessible, and enjoyable. When not in the classroom, you can find Greg doing research with ants and fireflies, playing pick-up basketball, cooking with his family, reading Marvel comics, or playing board games. He currently resides in Ripton, VT with his wife (a homeschool educator!) and two kids. You can find his latest teaching and research happenings on Twitter @G_Pask.