My Reflections on Live Oral Test Revisions
Before I begin, HERE is a great article from University of California: San Diego on using oral exams to improve student motivation and performance. It covers many of the things that motivated me to try out this technique to assess student competency.
A couple weeks ago, I posted a blog post on my idea to try out live, in-person oral test revisions for a past polynomial test my Algebra II students took. I had told them ahead of time there would be no revisions since we were so close to the end of Q3, so to make up for this, they were able to create an 8.5”x11” reference sheet to use on the test.
A significant amount of them did worse than I was hoping. I didn’t want this test to tank their Q4 grade, so I came up with a way for them to recover points. Out of my 69 total Algebra II students, 18 of them signed up for a time slot using Google Calendar booking and showed up to attempt the live redo. I had several versions of each problems for integrity reasons and used Wolfram Alpha’s website to create my new problems. This site was especially useful for quickly getting a polynomial with the desired amount and types of zeros.
Here are my reflections on how it went for future reference as I work to modify and adjust how this could work in the future. Below is the sheet I used to record my new problems and answers and keep track of who showed up on what date and whether they earned their points back or not.
When a student came in for their time slot, I had their test ready on my desk so I knew which problems they needed to retry to prove their mastery and understanding of the concepts. I sat at my desk and read them their problems while they worked at the vertical whiteboard next to my desk. If they did this after school when there was a group of students working on various revisions, I had them do their work on a big whiteboard flat on my desk while they sat across from me. This was they didn’t have a room full of people watching them.
First and foremost, this was a MAJOR time commitment. When I first created the appointment time slots, I incorrectly thought a 15 minute time slot would suffice. My students pointed out that they didn’t think this was enough, especially if they needed to retry all 9 of the test questions. I lengthened the time slots to 30 minutes, and every single one of them ended up needed longer than that. I came up with a system where one students would be close to done while another student would begin at the beginning with their time slot. This wasn’t an issue with the students and if anything, they didn’t mind since that meant the spotlight wasn’t all on them.
One big consideration I hadn’t thought of - should a student get more than one try? The calendar below shows how only 3 students made appointments for the first week, but 13 of them crammed their appointments in on the final two days. The students who attempted and did not pass in the first week were able to made second appointments, but once we got to Tuesday of the second week, I realized I was running out of time slots. I told them that anyone from that point would only get one chance to try. The two students who failed the first time did pass the second time with new problems, which seems to show that it’s beneficial to allow them to retry. However, it would be unsustainable and not feasible to allow everyone a second chance; there’s just not enough time in the day.
Also, it was exhausting hosting that many oral live revisions! On Friday, I literally didn’t move for 3 hours straight. I gave up all my prep periods, free time, lunch block, and after school hours to try this out. I am very excited to get this time back this upcoming week now that these oral revisions have ended.
I need to emphasize more ahead of time that this is an ‘all or nothing’ revision. To earn points back, they need to successfully complete all the types of problems they initially missed on the test.
That being said, I need to award MORE points back than what I originally planned. My idea was to give about 15% back if they got a C or above and 20% back if they got below a C. However, some of the students who successfully passed the oral revision had originally earned around 30%. This meant they were still technically failing, even though they proved they could now do all the problems.
Some students showed up expecting me to hold their hand through the problems and guide them when needed. I had to remind them that they needed to prove to me that they had mastered the content. It was hard not being able to tell them when they asked!
It was a tricky balance for me as an observer between watching them as they worked, but not making them feel like the spotlight and pressure was on them. I found that it helped having my paper planner or quick quizzes to grade in front of me. For the quicker problems, I watched them as they worked and asked them to explain right away. For the longer problems, especially ones that required testing possible zeros with p/q, I watched as they got started and told them that I would give them a chance to think and work and would check in on them frequently. Then I would go back and forth between working on something on my desk and looking up to check on them.
For that long p/q problem, after they wrote out the list of possible zeros, I told them right away which ones they could eliminate (for example: it won’t be a fractions, or it won’t be one of the larger numbers) to save them time and aggravation.
I always stopped them if they had made an error and were going down the wrong path. I didn’t tell them what the mistake was, but I found that asking them to explain their process and work so far helped a lot. Typically, while they were justifying their work, they spotted the mistake.
I played lofi music on low volume during this for a more relaxed mood and to make them feel at ease. Most of them were nervous coming into the live revision since they had never done something like this before.
It was very hard to tell a student that we needed to end the oral revision attempt because they were not able to solve the problems. For some of them, I could tell they simply hadn’t prepared enough or done the practice problems I gave them. For others, though, I knew they had put in time to get ready and just couldn’t solve the problems.
After they completed the reflections using their test, I collected their test (no test should leave my room) and had them keep their reflection packet so they had the practice problems and final answers when studying and preparing. I need to type out the exact test questions in that packet. What I found was for some of the problems, they initially missed points on things like vocabulary and theorems. The packet didn’t specifically state those details; it just gave new, similar problems. So some students still weren’t able to state the vocabulary needed when discussing multiplicity rules (concavity change and point of inflection) or theorems (like the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra when stating how many zeros a polynomial had). In these cases, if they could solve everything else out during the live revision, I gave them a free pass on the vocab or theorem since they legitimately forgot that had been asked on the test.
All in all, it was a learning experience for me and gave me more ideas of how to assess whether students know the content. I still need to work on how to make this realistic and sustainable without giving up every free minute I have during the day, time that would normally be spent planning, grading, replying to emails, parent outreach, or just using the bathroom or eating!