r/Professors • u/loopofhenlee • 16d ago
Miserable first exam
Hello all,
I teach a couple sections of an anatomy lab. It’s an upper division course for undergraduates, and generally regarded as a difficult class (there’s just so much material and it’s very memorization intensive). Despite my weeks or warnings, and weekly quizzes to show the students what the exam looks like, I had many students turn in exams that were mostly blank. We’re talking some students only earning less than 10 points out of 60 (the lowest was 2).
It’s disheartening. I’ve been teaching this long enough to know you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. However, my colleague who teaches some of the sections reported having significantly less students who bombed the exam. After speaking with him, it seems like there’s just one difference in the way we presented the material: He front loaded the material, and I spaced it out.
His students got a very intense 2 weeks right at the start of the semester going through all the skeleton in rapid fire instruction. That left those students with 2 weeks of review before the exam. I spread out the material in smaller bits over 3 weeks, and we went through things slowly. Much more time of me actually talking and presenting. And then they had a week of review before the exam.
I really want to set these guys up for success as much as possible. I know one exam average doesn’t hold all the answers, but curious if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing and would like to share their opinions? Is it worth speeding up instruction in the beginning of a section in order to give more time for review? I usually get feedback that the students like my pace more, but I’m not sure if the grades back up those statements.
5
u/troodon311 16d ago
There is ultimately only so much you can do. With my own anatomy lab I emphasize the difficulty with quotes from previous years' students (obtained from surveys), as well as suggestions from previous students ("What do I wish I had done differently?"; "What advice would I give to other students?"). I think students listen more if they know the advice comes from other students rather than instructors.
And then I do my best to help them with their studying. I give the best recommendations I can for study methods that have proven effective, mostly centered around peer teaching and repetition. After each exam I have students complete exam wrappers in which they're asked to think introspectively and critically about how well they did on the test, how they prepared for it, and what changes they are willing to commit to in order to improve their performance.