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Pedagogy Group Reflection

Thinking about your own past as a student/learner, what was one assignment/assessment that really stood out to you? Why was it so memorable? What made it really effective in helping you in the learning process (or really ineffective in the learning process).

The first thing that I want to note about my experience as a student is that I remember almost nothing at all about any of the assessments. When I first started this reflection, I felt a bit put out by this fact. Certainly, I spent thousands and thousands of hours doing homework. And almost none of it comes to mind as I reflect on this prompt. Is that so strange though? I’ve eat thousands of meals and there are only a few that really come to mind.

One of the most outstanding assessments I ever had was an exam for an advanced algebra course that I took in Moscow. I studied at the Independent University of Moscow for my final semester of undergraduate, via the Math in Moscow program. The course was structured as follows: On the first day of class, we were presented with an uchyebnik (little booklet) of problems. There were something like two hundred problems, which ranged from routine to extraordinarily difficult. The booklet was our “homework” for the class. It would be well-nigh impossible to do all the problems in the allotted semester.
Instead, we were encouraged to work with others, and share solutions. The professor for the course, Katsylo, would occasionally solve problems in class. He didn’t make a grand announcement that he was about to solve a problem from the list, but would simply teach us algebra and work through problems.

The final exam was structured as follows: Katsylo would interview each student based on their answers to the problems from the list. He allowed students to declare a list of questions that they did not want to answer. There was some penalty associated with declaring a problem as “not on the exam”. The penalty was something like 5% of your final grade. If a student said they didn’t want to talk about four particular problems, then their highest possible grade would be 80% assuming they answered the remaining exam problems perfectly. If you failed to answer a question during the interview, your grade would drop by a similar amount. And so, a student who failed a question and declared four questions not on the exam would score 75%.

This meant that the final exam went something like the following: You walked in to our small classroom, sat down across from Katsylo, and declared a few questions. He then asked a handful of questions of escalating difficulty, but which you knew essentially knew the answers of. He would encourage you if you stumbled, and tell you when things weren’t sounding quite right. The whole process took about five minutes. You got a grade, and left.

As I write about it now, I’m struck by how the whole course was really designed around that list of problems. There was no other homework, no midterms, no superfluous quizzes, or attendance marks. It was all in that booklet.

What made that exam so effective? A couple things come to mind. First, it was built to encourage collaboration. All the students in the course were constantly talking about the list. If someone “cracked” a hard problem, the would run around the dorm telling everyone. Late night conversations ensued. Second, the list kept us attentive in lecture. We had a reason to keep track of what was going on. Katsylo wouldn’t announce that he was doing something on the list, unless it was exceedingly difficult.

Reflecting on it now, after more than a decade, I think Katsylo’s advanced algebra exam was the most humane exam I ever “wrote”. It was a conversation between two people. You had the opportunity to say what you did and did not want to talk about. It was simple, effective, and relational.

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Published: Oct 31, 2024

Last Modified: Oct 31, 2024

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