Because I primarily teach undergraduates one of the best ways to assess their learning is through quizzes and exams. We engage in 5 quizzes throughout the semester--I drop the lowest quiz grade to allow the students room to fail without impacting their grade. The quizzes have been a good indication for how much more the students need to study for the major exams. I have develop the tests to be half content driven and have application based questions. This gives the students a deeper understanding on how best to use the theory in practice. We also have the students complete a short answer essay question. It allows more critical thinking and problem solving along with writing skills to be assessed. For online sections I provide exam review session via zoom. Students have commented how much those help them to prep for exams. I used to provide a general overview study guide for the midterm and final exams but based on feedback from students they wanted more detailed study guides. Last year I completed detailed chapter study guides for the students and the response has been great how much they help. 

Challenge as an educator

One challenge that I am facing with online learning is the amount of academic dishonesty that has taken place since COVID. I have always been a person with high integrity and ethical standards. I have had a hard time with the amount of cheating that has been occurring with our students. I have implemented HonorLock for all quizzes and exams. I am trying to balance rigor and learning without comprising the process. Unfortunately, I have had to report record numbers for my class on cheating on exams and quizzes. While I don’t like being the bad guy I do want to provide a lesson to the students that they are only hurting themselves during these incidents. I have tried to rethink my assignments and deliverables to be engaging and fair without the use of unfair practices. ChatGPT has also not helped in this pursuit of learning. I have been diligently studying up on the technology and trying to figure out how to teach our students to use the tools for good rather then evil. These instances will not go away but I do feel it is our responsibility as educators to help students understand the consequences and to teach good ethical practices.

Student Comment:

"I also enjoyed the test format, it was very straightforward, and the exams covered all the topics from the book and class, which I find sometimes with exams some teachers don’t do. The reflective blogs were also great in reinforcing what we learned from class. It was almost like a mini review session and kept the information fresh in the mind. I think the class was very well organized and executed. I wouldn’t mind taking it again!"

"The most valuable aspects of the course were definitely the study guides and the Connect assignments. They were super helpful because they let me see how much I was actually learning from the online lectures. The assignments also reinforced the material, so I felt more confident about the quizzes and exams."