Hi! Thank you for sharing your experience so thoughtfully. I teach physics, and last year I tried only take home, open resource tests. We made up the problems ourselves, so students could not look up the answers on the internet, although internet research was allowed (as were all other resources). The one rule was that students couldn't collaborate and I trusted that they did their own work. My colleague and I tried it for the entire year. We were in a hybrid model through May, then fully in person. We did not want to waste one of our two precious class periods per week on taking tests, which was our original motivation. Once we returned to fully in person, and two to three days per week, we still felt the same way, so we did not switch back to timed, in person tests. At the end of the year, I received this note from a student:
"I was thinking about our conversation yesterday about how physics causes me the least stress of all my classes. I definitely like physics a lot more than previous science classes, but I think that is a result of the less stress and not the cause of it. I think the real reason it's not as stressful as other classes is because of the take-home assessments!
Which got me thinking more, because I can see how it might be worrying as a teacher to give students take-home assessments that they could cheat on. But, the take-home assessments (in my opinion) have made me actually learn the material more. It feels less like I'm learning the info for a test, which makes me actually remember the content after we take the assessment. In other science classes, I always forget about the material after we take a test and I think that's because when I learn it, I'm learning it so that I can remember it on the test. With the take-home assessments, I feel like I'm learning the material so that I can actually learn the material, and the assessment is just part of the learning process. I don't know how much sense that made, but I was thinking about it and thought I'd tell you!"
We are still talking about what to do this year, but if it were entirely up to me, I would continue this practice indefinitely, along with timed, ungraded, formative short quizzes from time to time to develop fluency and recall, but without the pressure of that skill being included in a grade.
I really did feel, anecdotally, that my students had a deep, thorough, meaningful understanding of physics this year. I also figured out that, giving about 12+ tests all year, I saved myself almost two weeks of contact time with students that I could use for interesting discussions, activities, group practice and community building, instead of sitting in a room listening to kids' hearts beat out of their chests as they try to remember three week's worth of physics in 55 minutes.
Hi! Thank you for sharing your experience so thoughtfully. I teach physics, and last year I tried only take home, open resource tests. We made up the problems ourselves, so students could not look up the answers on the internet, although internet research was allowed (as were all other resources). The one rule was that students couldn't collaborate and I trusted that they did their own work. My colleague and I tried it for the entire year. We were in a hybrid model through May, then fully in person. We did not want to waste one of our two precious class periods per week on taking tests, which was our original motivation. Once we returned to fully in person, and two to three days per week, we still felt the same way, so we did not switch back to timed, in person tests. At the end of the year, I received this note from a student:
"I was thinking about our conversation yesterday about how physics causes me the least stress of all my classes. I definitely like physics a lot more than previous science classes, but I think that is a result of the less stress and not the cause of it. I think the real reason it's not as stressful as other classes is because of the take-home assessments!
Which got me thinking more, because I can see how it might be worrying as a teacher to give students take-home assessments that they could cheat on. But, the take-home assessments (in my opinion) have made me actually learn the material more. It feels less like I'm learning the info for a test, which makes me actually remember the content after we take the assessment. In other science classes, I always forget about the material after we take a test and I think that's because when I learn it, I'm learning it so that I can remember it on the test. With the take-home assessments, I feel like I'm learning the material so that I can actually learn the material, and the assessment is just part of the learning process. I don't know how much sense that made, but I was thinking about it and thought I'd tell you!"
We are still talking about what to do this year, but if it were entirely up to me, I would continue this practice indefinitely, along with timed, ungraded, formative short quizzes from time to time to develop fluency and recall, but without the pressure of that skill being included in a grade.
I really did feel, anecdotally, that my students had a deep, thorough, meaningful understanding of physics this year. I also figured out that, giving about 12+ tests all year, I saved myself almost two weeks of contact time with students that I could use for interesting discussions, activities, group practice and community building, instead of sitting in a room listening to kids' hearts beat out of their chests as they try to remember three week's worth of physics in 55 minutes.