15 Part K: Humanizing Assignments, Tests, and Exams

“Having the choice to pick what format you do your final assignment in is always such a refreshing experience. Sometimes you don’t want to do a 10-page essay and would rather do a video presentation or whatever other option a professor offers. I feel better about what assignment I am doing when I know I picked a format that worked best for me.” – Recent Religion graduate

“In Fall 2020, almost all my instructors added lots of tiny assignments (discussion board posts, lecture quizzes, etc.). They said it was so we could keep engaging with material/keep on track, and they purposefully made everything worth small marks. But it was just overwhelming.” – Third-year Science student

In practice, this can look like:

• Offer exam wrappers, wherein students reflect on their approach and experience writing the exam and can also repeat one of the exam questions.
• Exam wrapper prompts might include the following:
  • What went well in terms of how you studied for this test?
  • What will you change next time in terms of your approach to studying?
  • Would more time to study have helped the study process OR would all the time in the world not have helped the study process?
  • Did you study diagrams?
  • Did you make a list of terms and their definitions?
  • Did you find yourself losing focus while studying?
  • Did you find yourself feeling hopeless while studying?
  • Do you believe you might have procrastinated studying?
• Experiment with asynchronous study tools. Access to study groups and other forms of enriched study practices might be reduced for some students. An asynchronous tool allows students to work collaboratively on different problems, using a google spreadsheet where they can read what others are contributing, build on it, ask instructors questions about it, and practice applying the concepts.
  These study tools can guide students to generate their own example questions, which other students can answer and then write more of them.
• Try to create assignments, tests, and exams etc. that allow the learner to demonstrate what they know in a way that is meaningful to them. Humanized assignments allow the learner to bring their histories, knowledge, and experience to bear on the exam. They allow for multiple forms of expressing an answer and for self-reflection on how the information impacts their knowledge. They allow for some discussion/acknowledgement of what clashes with existing knowledge.
• Provide time and flexibility so that students can think about their writing. Time constraints, whenever necessary, should be realistic and reasonable.
• Provide a clear study guide in advance of the exam with information about format, scope, and advice for how to prepare. Include sample questions and answers if possible.
• Host well-planned and helpful review sessions. You might give students a block of 25 questions prior to the exam, with the knowledge that maybe 10-12 of them will be on the exam. This can help the students to learn what the central takeaways from the class are, and lets them focus more on preparation instead of just memorization.
• Give students the option to check for unintentional plagiarism by using the same software you are using. Most LMS have this option. It is a safe way for students to check their work before submitting.
• Provide clear direction about maintaining academic integrity.
• Create tests with different sections, rather than all short answer or all essay questions. Include multiple choice and/or true/false questions.
• The addition of a bonus question is sometimes fun and eases some anxiety.
• Consider offering take home exams that the students have at east 48 hours to complete.
• Design peer evaluation rubrics that concentrate on what students learned, liked, appreciated, and found interesting in their peers’ work, rather than what needs to be corrected. After, ask them to propose how their evaluation can improve their own works.
• Do practice tests (same format, same level of complexity, only shorter version) before online tests/exam. You might even do a rehearsal (like a fire drill) on technical troubles, asking questions, and internet interruption.
• Design assignments and tests that challenge students by prioritizing problem solving, extrapolating, creative responses, etc., rather than mere extreme memory and rigorous accuracy.
• Acknowledging that students are humans who become stressed under time constraints will help to ensure students are being tested on how well they understand course material and not how fast they can read or write.
• Open pedagogy can inspire more innovative, learning-centred design, supported by the vast affordances of the internet, where learners are co-creators of knowledge. Consider alternative assignments that live ‘beyond the classroom’ – that students can add to their portfolios or resumes  (creating a portfolio or an open educational resource) – or assignments that ask them to contribute to the knowledge commons (social annotation, editing Wikipedia, creating YouTube videos).
• Consider assignments that propose solutions for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which are a set of 17 goals that address a wide range of social issues, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and peace and justice.
• Create renewable assignments (all of which will carry a Creative Commons license) to help students become agents of change in their own communities.

Timed tests can measure processing speed rather than an individual’s ability to apply knowledge. The option of only a written assignment runs the risk of testing someone’s ability to write — not what they necessarily know. Humanizing Learning asks that we have conversations to identify what is being learned and to reflect on how the mode of assessment is part of the content to be learned. This is what makes teaching so challenging and exciting. These conversations need to be deepened rather than ended too soon because it is complicated and we have competing demands.