Student test anxiety
I often find that student intentionally make up excuses to miss tests because of their high test anxiety - I have considered doing a class-wide relaxation exercise prior to administering a test - any thoughts on this idea?
Note:our institution does allow students to take exams in our testing center
Hi Jackie:
Laughter; nature's balancing act.
Regards, Barry
When I was in my professional school, just before every major exam, presentation, what have you, the instructors would make all of us stand up and do the chicken dance as a group, or the hokey pokey, or other foolishness like that to get us laughing. Once the laughter broke out, we took a few minutes to compose ourselves and then tested. Test scores were always much higher when we did this.
There are always a few students who claim to have test anxiety. In a class with multicultural diversity and language barriers, letting the students know that you can rephrase a question for better understanding
seems to help with test anxiety.
This may not work for every class but I create a test very early in the class that only covers one or two topics. The test is 30 questions and open book. The students are all successfull. This technique sets them up with a good grade to begin the class and builds some confidence.
Hi Annette:
Test anxiety is probably a fact of life for the student in training. I suppose when it gets exccesive, or out of control that it's a problem.
Stress reduction exercises may help. Some stress comes from fear. What is the source of the fear? Not prepared, Didn't study enough? Have to bring up my grades. Don't know the material?
I think if the teacher can diminish the "fear factor", we can also reduce the anxiety factor somwewhat. How?
* Practice tests (no grading)
* Peer testing (members of groups test one another)
* Pre-testing
* Examination review
It's great when the teacher can get the students to feel the teacher is contributing to the students learning, and is not the culprit that is creating undue stress.
Regards, Barry
