Essay Questions
The best Idea I have gotten thus far was a was to do essay questions. I am not a fan of essay question but this is a good idea.
Carol, I meet many instructors who feel the same way, particularly about the time commitment. I see your point about essay questions being a bit too recall-based too. With great internet access in most roles, a successful student won't need recall skills as much as they will need great search skills. Perhaps those search skills are what we should be testing.
Dr. Melissa Read
I don't use essay questions in my course. They are to time consuming and I do not think they test critical thinking. I think they are just too knowledge recall based.
I believe that essay questions are an excellent way of assessing a student's knowledge. I find this to be especially true in my program which is "Paralegal". We are working in a field where you are in constant communication with people of all different educational backgrounds. Therefore it is imperative that a student be able to express themselves clearly when they get into the workforce. My students always complain about these questions, but I always reply with the response that "you need to look at these questions as being questions from the client and you need to give them an explanation of a concept or situation so that they understand what is going on in their case". "The client is not going to give you a true/false or multiple choice question when they call you on the phone or come into the office to meet with you".
I believe that this allows students to show how they are able to apply what they are learning by being able to explain it to you in their own words.
Ah, a kindred spirit! I also spend more time on tht first paper, trying to spell out choices and results.
Although the WAC movement has waxed and waned and waxed and waned over the years, I think we're gaining in allies across the curriculum on the value of requiring that students learn to communicate clearly, especially in writing.
As an English teacher, I am just horrified by teachers who use primarily scantron tests. I usually assign short answer questions and just a couple of essay questions. I definitely hear you Re: feeling like you are spending more time on the assignment than the student. I DO feel that the first paper that is turned in in a class deserves that much attention, though. I usually mark up individual mistakes on the first paper only and also include a more general rubric; after the first paper, I usually stick with just the rubric.
I dispise essay questions. But by reading this i do like the idea of underline important parts. That would really help with the grading procedure.
Essay questions are great for helping students explore an idea in depth and connect and apply the concepts being taught in the course. They also demonstrate our respect for developing students' skills in communicating their ideas, an essential as they move up the ladder of success.
However, they do indeed require intensive labor on the part of the instructor. Sometimes, as I wrestle with explaining to a student how the essay could be improved (without doing all of the revision myself), I think I've spent more time on on the paper than the student did!
One tool that helps is a scoring guide that can serve the student as a rubric for the expectations in the assignment, a checklist for the student before submitting the assignment, and a feedback device for the instructor to deliver with the returned paper. It's particularly helpful to an instructor in keeping perspective. For example, if I'm reading a paper riddled with grammar errors, I might be so annoyed that I forget the student has a really good idea buried in there. In addition to marking the grammar errors in the paper, I use my scoring guide to rate the student's work on Content and Development, Organization, Grammar and Presentation, Information Literacy and Research, and Critical and Creative Thinking. The scoring guide has specific standards listed under each category, and I can provide more specific feedback by underscoring a part (well done) or circling (this aspect needs serious improvement).
Most of my classes are Composition, so all my assignments are essays. I do admit to daydreams every so often about finding a way to have students create their essay assignments so they can be graded with a Scantron!
I agree I am not a fan of essay questions but, I do like the idea of having to students to underline the important information
