Regarding “Midterms test cramming skills rather than real knowledge” (Oct. 22, pg. 7):
In simple terms, columnist Elliot Levy catered to all students who are stressed over exams. He said he was “exhausted and running out of No-Doz.” I was laughing until he got to the point that midterms were not necessary, and did not really test knowledge. What an over-generalization that was! But. I’ll give him this — Mr. Levy has learned to always write timely things that will be “compelling” to his readers and relate to their daily lives. But his midterm thesis was just too simple and is wrong.
After reading Elliot’s statement that he was taking three College of Communication classes, where there are no midterms, finals or written exams, I said to myself, “How do I transfer there?” But he failed to mention to his readers that he and his advertising classmates are challenged, researching and writing and re-writing on various assigned projects. He and his classmates are involved in applying communication theory and other advertising tools they have learned to real advertising problems in these classes.
Your Boston University professors spend a lot of time designing courses, tests, papers and projects to ensure real learning and new knowledge is stimulated. That includes knowledge measurement tools, such as tests.
For example, the structure of any course depends on the subject matter. One class cannot be compared to another, which has different material and teaching objectives. In my freshman Communication CO 101 class, I have two major papers, two speeches, a weekly point paper assignment, a midterm and a second exam. There is a lot of writing and speaking.
This is a teaching concept of allowing people to learn from the class experience. Why do I have a weekly one-page point paper? This is an example of how teaching at the graduate level and undergraduate level can work together. In spring semester, I teach a graduate seminar on Government Public Affairs. I learned in that class that my graduate students had mastered writing a 100-page paper with zillions of footnotes, but when I gave it back and said, “I’m a busy executive, give me a one-page executive summary of your paper,” the students went crazy at first. So, I decided I would start with freshmen in teaching them how to take a lot of material, digest it, boil it down in writing — keeping the most important points for the one-page executive summary.
Learning and teaching at the college level is all about a “balanced diet” of researching or reading, critical thinking, writing and, most importantly, applying new knowledge to issues or problems. For example, on my COM 101 mid-term I had an essay question with a communication problem. If we were in high school, I would have merely asked the students to diagram the communication process theory and explain the two-step communication theory. But to test that theory knowledge, I instead gave an essay question scenario, which could only be correctly answered if the student could applied that knowledge in their answer.
Sometimes tests with time constraints are the best way to test people in communication problem solving. I disagree with Mr. Levy when he states that a 90-minute test cannot be “an effective measure of student comprehension.” It can and will be an effective measure if the teacher constructed and grades the exam with care. All of life’s problems have time constraints.
Also, in the communication field, we are always facing time deadlines in whatever we do. We may have a lot less than 90 minutes. It is always interesting for a teacher monitoring a mid-term to see students who finish a test early, sitting next to students who seem to not have enough time.
Mr. Levy ends his article by saying that “everything I do in college should be either fun or academically enriching.” My goal, as a teacher, is to have my students leave my classes armed with new knowledge that they can apply in their later lives. That is, apply in a way that will result in making a living, but also making them life long-learners — enjoying intellectual subjects. That is a real recipe for fun, and I find my students to be very interesting human beings.
But enough of this writing nonsense — Excuse me, I have to go and mark exams.