One question that students love to ask and that is pure torture for my professorial soul is “How should I prepare for the test?”
In a course that is run the way it should be, if I do my job right and the students do theirs, there is no need to prepare for the test. My goal is not to get my students to memorize information for the purposes of reproducing it for the exam or the mini-quiz. This is a completely useless exercise that defeats the entire purpose of higher education which should be to teach students to think for themselves.
Today, we have a test in one of my courses. The test will provide students with excerpts from texts we read and discussed and they will have to analyze them. That’s it. No memorization, cramming or regurgitation of anything will be involved.
Students who are unafraid of thinking and expressing their opinions will breeze through the test. Those, however, who want “correct answers” provided for them beforehand will not have a good time.
On Friday, when I was explaining the format of this test and mentioned that the students would have to provide their analysis of the texts, one student asked, “Will it be multiple choice?”
I would really like to know the name of the enemy of humanity who invented this nasty multiple-choice obsession and how it is possible that people think the words ‘analysis’ and ‘multiple choice’ belong together.
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment