What Is the Challenge?
We are pitching a challenge to the professors and faculty at Penn State University to allow for students to gain a second opportunity to receive credit for mastering material, if not credited the first time. We are calling this challenge Second Chance Learning.
The way in which we are trying to implement Second Chance Learning should be different based on the department and subject that we are working with. For example, a Chemistry student takes an exam and gets a mechanistic question incorrect, and has the opportunity to do that one question again in order to gain some credit for it.
Why Is This Important?
We believes that this challenge is important because it feeds into the enrichment of students' education by giving them the notion that exams are not always be-all end-all. Many students, especially in STEM departments struggle with exams each semester because of the heavy weighting put on these activities and the importance stressed on these exams.
This more-so is not to hand out points to students but rather to give them a better chance at understanding/learning the material that they are being tested on. This challenge is brought on in essence of improving a student’s current knowledge.
How Do We Address This Challenge?
To address this challenge, some of the old ways of departments at Penn State University should be changed. For example, it has been noticed that most departments have a fixed average that they try to reach. Therefore, they do not care about how well the individuals performed on the exams as long as the expected average has been reached. This idea should be changed since departments would not provide students who did not perform well on exams a second chance.
What Traditional Mindsets Need to Change For This To Work?
In some courses, Math especially, the exams are designed to trap students into falling into mistakes that are common, despite the fact that they know the material. And since the math exams are multiple choices, it leaves students losing points on concepts that they know because of common mistakes that professors make too. This leaves students losing the all of the points instead of giving them partial credit where it is deserved. Moreover, it seems that the Math department trys to fail most students, and statistically they succeed. We have noticed in our Math classes that after each exam, the number of students decreases drastically. The idea of failing students on purpose needs to be changed if we want to give students another chance to succeed.
After changing these, the challenge could be easily solved. Khalaf Alshammari, a member of our group, took Econ 102 in his first semester at this school, and what he noticed is that the professor showed the students that he cared about them getting high grades. What he did was give students the opportunity to drop the exam that they scored the lowest on by making them read two books related to the materials that they are learning and answer questions about what they read. This made them understand economic better and score higher, leaving students better off. Finally, all it takes to solve this challenge is for ideas to be changed; then, willingness to change.
Impact
Both students and faculty would be affected by enforcing solutions to this challenge.
A more negative impact would be that it would require significantly more time for both parties. Students would be expected to spend more time understanding the course material and demonstrating that they have. Faculty members would be expected to allocate more time to grading these additional assessments.
Although these solutions would require a considerable increase in effort and time commitment, it would have an important positive impact. Because the students will have seen the course concepts more times and have put in more effort to comprehend it, they will have a much better chance of mastering the material.
Difficulties
One of the biggest obstacles of implementing these solutions is the issue of fairness.
What happens if a student does extremely well the first time he or she takes an assessment? Should students mastering the material for the second time get the same grade as a student who mastered it the first time?
To prevent any concerns of being unfair, any points earned back during Second Chance Learning would be given in partial credit. This solution still rewards students to master the material the second time while also rewarding those you master it for the first assessment.
Available Resources To Make This Successful
There are many different resources to help professors solve the challenge that are specific for the type of class.
For example, the previously mentioned Econ 102 professor chose to make his students read two books related to the course. The library at Penn State University is a wonderful place to look for such books to assign for students to read, but a downside of this approach is that the professor then has to grade these additional assignments.
An example pertaining to Math would be a professor helping students get their grades up by assigning extra problems that focus on their weaknesses and how to spot questions that do not fit the usual formula of solving that type of problem. These extra problems could be assigned online via WebAssign or MyMathLab to students. These two resources are easy to access and to use, and it does not cost the professors any extra time to grade since the two sources grade the students automatically. All the professors have to do is report the grades on Canvas.
Overall, there are many resources available to professors who want to give students another chance at learning, and these resources are available to help them no matter what course they are teaching.
Does What We Have Now Prepare Us For The Real World?
Having second chances in life is rare. However in school is not real life. In an article named “Are your students learning from their mistakes?" David Gooblar states that “being able to see your failures and other setbacks as learning opportunities -- and not as indications of lack of talent or intelligence -- is crucial to achieving success in almost any pursuit.” Nowadays with the system of no retakes in colleges, it does not help students develop the necessary skill of learning from their mistakes. “Real learning comes from practice and from awareness of past missteps. Students who did poorly on the exam may just need more time to learn," said Gooblar.
In a 2014 book "Specifications Grading," Linda B. Nilson wrote about a grading system she developed. Instead of asking how the student did on the exam, ask if they master the learning outcomes of the course in the end. “Only mastery, or lack of mastery, is all.”
Do Our Current Teaching Goals Match Students' Learning Goals?
In Rick Wormeli’s “Redos and Retakes Done Right,” he indicates that “allowing students to redo assignments and assessments is the best way to prepare them for adult life.” Teachers who set strict grading rules like late homework resulting in an automatic 0 and no retakes on exams and assignments, hoping to teach students responsibilities, often in reality, have the opposite effect -- as Wormeli said. Each student has his or her own learning schedule. The student may or may not know a certain subject at a certain point of time. Should we punish them for not learning at the speed of the rest of us? The teaching goal of all education institute is for the students to learn the material in the end, not just in a uniformed timeline. Curriculum goals do not require that all students reach the same level of proficiency on the same day, only that they achieve that goal at the end. Setting a test date is for teachers’ and schools’ convenience, not for students’ learning goals. It may be somewhat necessary but not truly fair.
“Allowing student to redo both assignments and assessments for particularly important standards and outcomes most of the time is highly effective.” -- Wormeli.
If Olympians Are Not Assessed on Every Practice Trial, Why Should Students Be?
A world class athlete at the Olympics would already be at the professional level. But how did he or she get there? By trying thousands of times and probably failing hundreds of times. When he or she competes at the Olympic, that would be his or her final try for that time. Say the athlete is running 100 meter dash. If he/she ran 9.58 sec that would be awesome and he/she would win. But if he/she ran 15 sec in his/her own backyard, no one would care. Same goes for exams in school. If a student fails one test, that is only one test. The test, just like the hundreds of fails in the athlete's career, is not seen like the final at the Olympics. Should the athlete be disqualified just because one trail run fails? No. But why are students punished for having a sick day on the final exam day and be forced to fail that final?
Sources:
http://math.arizona.edu/~vbohme/Redos%20and%20Retakes%20Done%20Right.pdf
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1421-are-your-students-learning-from-their-mistakes
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