Proof Points: College exams amid the pandemic

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By Jill Barshay

A recent Harvard study caught my attention because it may have landed upon a clever pandemic workaround that could also change the way many college professors administer exams even when we return to in-person learning.

It’s a still unpublished working paper about two-stage exams, which were successfully administered during remote learning at Harvard and University of California Merced during the spring of 2020. In two-stage exams, students take the same exam twice, first individually and then in a group.

Read the column

Key Findings

Structure: Students took an individual test directly on the computer at home. Then, in groups of three to four students, they had 24 hours to retake the test over a video app such as Zoom, FaceTime or SnapChat.
Students gave similar positive ratings to both formats of the group exam -- in-person and remote -- when asked about their levels of engagement, collaboration and feedback.
Students also remembered the material weeks after the online version of the two-stage exam was over.

Teacher Takeaway

The combination of high student engagement with instant feedback, which occurs during the second group stage of the test, seems to be particularly beneficial for learning.
Students said they liked that the group exam was untimed during remote learning

Lit Review

Kristina Callaghan, Anna Klales, Logan McCarty, Louis Deslauriers, “Asynchronous two-stage exams as a low-cost option for assessing and increasing learning in STEM courses,” unpublished working paper, viewed in September 2020.
Knierim, K.,. H. Turner, and R. K. Davis. 2015. “Two-Stage Exams Improve Student Learning in an Introductory Geology Course: Logistics, Attendance, and Grades.” Journal of Geoscience Education 63 (2):157–64. doi:10.5408/14-051.1.
J. E. Cooke, L. Weir, and B. Clarkston. 2019. “Retention following Two-Stage Collaborative Exams Depends on Timing and Student Performance.” CBE—Life Sciences Education
Jang H., Lasry N., Miller K., Mazur E. (2017). Collaborative exams: Cheating? Or learning? American Journal of Physics Education, (3), 223–227.
Leight H., Saunders C., Calkins R., Withers M. (2012). Collaborative testing improves performance but not content retention in a large-enrollment introductory biology class. CBE—Life Sciences Education, (4), 392–401.
Genevieve Newton, Rebecca Rajakaruna, Verena Kulak, William Albabish, Brett H. Gilley, and Kerry Ritchie Two-Stage (Collaborative) Testing in Science Teaching: Does It Improve Grades on Short-Answer Questions and Retention of Material? National Science Teaching Association