Mocking vs. Subject Day

The last couple of years, a debate on what learning effects exams and mocking have on students, have appeared at the school where I teach. The main reason why this discussion has come up is that we have had an increasingly higher focus on how teachers should use their limited time in classroom to achieve as much learning among the students as possible.

The exam form (the mocking is mainly similar) is a test where students are tested on how much they know about one or more topics in a subject. When using this test form we measure and give marks - numbers between 1 and 6. This way to evaluate on has been widely used over the years in both junior high, high school and universities. Therefore, one should think the students had great learning benefits from this form since this is the common practice at nearly every school around the country, but sadly it’s not. Research has shown us that formative evaluation, which goes on during the working process, and where the purpose is to guide the students, not to measure them, creates better effects of learning. Also less focus on marks have shown better learning effects, and one reason is that when students get back their test or assignment, they first look at the mark, and second at the teacher’s feedback. Marks make students less motivated to learn from what they did well and the mistakes they made.

At our school we have replaced mocking in two subjects (Norwegian and English) with “subject day” where students receive guidance and assistance while they write. Instead of having one long day, we have split it into two halves. This gives students a break where they can think through how to continue their writing, and the teacher has time to thoroughly go through the unfinished texts from the first half day. When the other half day starts (usually two days after the first), the students receive tips and guidance on how to finalize the text in the best possible way.

On Subject Day communication and collaboration is allowed, the only restriction is Internet (but maybe, some day in the near future, this will also be allowed). Some students like to work only with teacher’s help, while others prefer some kind of collaboration with other students, and this has shown up to work quite well. 

In Norway we have three exam/mocking subjects, Norwegian, English and Math. Since both students and teachers are very satisfied with having replaced the mocking with “subject day”, we will over the next few months discuss and try to find out if it is possible to do this with math too. Math stand out from the language courses, and the form must necessarily be somewhat different. The goal is to change the focus from measurement to learning, and to have prepared a subject day form for math which can be introduced at the end of the term.