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Taking And Passing Tests

**This content is excerpted from the Guerilla Manual for Adult College Students. To learn more about the book or author visit AdultStudents.com .

"This semester I'm studying more. I'm having a real hard time with Biology. It's just not my forte. I got a 94 in my Cost Accounting exam the other night, but only a 2.5 out of 10 in my Bio exam. Oh, good! I'm not even an F - I'm a G!"
Lorene K. finished her Associate's degree in May 1999 and went on for her Bachelor's.

Tests of some sort are a fact of life if you are in college.

Every student, young or old, faces them in every class. In high school there were only a couple of variations of test methods: multiple choice, fill in the blanks, short or long essay, and book reports and research papers covered most of the possibilities.

As we saw in a previous chapter, adults learn differently than younger people, and most teachers who deal with adults understand that tests should be more tailored to the adults' different learning style. So in addition to the tried and true test techniques just noted, in classes full of adults you are likely to run into a couple of other types of testing protocol as well.

A brief note on the life of the teacher.

A typical class might have 20 to 30 or more students. Multiply that by the number of tests that will be given. If there's a quiz every two weeks in a 16-week class, a mid-term and a final for 30 students, your teacher has to review and grade 10 tests per student, or 300 different tests. That's a lot of work and responsibility right there. If she's teaching more than one class - and most full-timers teach at least three and as many as six per semester - you can see that the work load quickly gets pretty substantial.

What does this discussion have to do with tests? Only that most teachers try to simplify their lives as much as they are able while still creating tests that will demonstrate that you really do know the material.

"One of the things we get here is that adult student disease (known as) A-itis. If they don't get an A they're a failure. Anything less is unacceptable - they want a bullseye every time."
Betty Smith, adult student counselor at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY, commenting on the standards adult students set for themselves. Betty is something of an expert on this subject, since she didn't start college until she was in her late 40s. She ultimately earned a Master's Degree.

Hands-on tests

It's well known that adults learn best those things that they participate actively in, rather than passively listening to a lecture. That's why, in classes that lend themselves to the method, more "hands on" tests are a possibility. These might include presentations, demonstrations or the creation of something tangible - a model, a painting, a poem, a short story, a video tape, an example of some sort. These projects involve you physically in the material, and make you actually demonstrate, through the creation of something, that you really grasp the content of the class and the purpose of learning it.

The benefit of these sorts of tests is that they generally are a lot more fun than staring at multiple choice questions, and at the end of the class you have something that you can keep and show off - a painting, a model, a poem, etc.

Since these projects usually take a fair amount of time to create (if you do them well), and your teacher knows this, they might count for a lot of your grade. In some ways this simplifies your life in that class. You only have to do one (or maybe two) relatively "big" things to pass that class. Instead of being constantly concerned with a continuous string of smaller quizzes, tests and papers, you have just one or two things you need to accomplish and you have met the criteria to demonstrate a knowledge of the material.

Group/team projects

In many real world circumstances we humans work in groups. Certainly this is true in the business world that many of us inhabit. As adults we have to learn to cooperate with other adults, set mutually acceptable goals, divide the work load among the participants, continually coordinate the different tasks, and gauge the progress of the project.

In many adult-oriented classes you may have the chance to work as a group on a project, a paper, a test of some sort. There are both plusses and minuses in these team projects.

The upside is that you get to split the work load with others. You don't have to do everything by yourself. And as in the real world, certain individuals are better at certain tasks than others. Some of your teammates will be better researchers, better organizers, better writers, better proofreaders, etc. Once you identify who is good at what, different members can be assigned different responsibilities and the whole team benefits. At least that's the theory.

The downside of working in teams is that you may have limited control over either the content or the quality of the project. You have to depend on the skills and responsibility of people who are essentially strangers to you. And, since most groups working on a project agree to accept a single grade for every member of the group, you are putting much of the responsibility for your grade into the hands of other people.

Does this make you nervous? It should at least give you pause for reflection. If you can exercise control over the make-up of the group, and have some confidence in the ability of everyone in the group to pull their own weight, then a group project may prove to be a benefit to you (and everyone else on the team.) But be warned that classrooms, just like workplaces and families, have their share of people who would just as soon you did all the work while they get to share in the credit.

"I've had to read the whole text book, do all the questions in the text book, read three outside books, report on those books, and then do a 25 to 45 page paper."
Rich B. commenting on how he was tested in his non-residential, non-traditional four year college.

Our old friends the multiple choice, true-false, matching, fill in the blanks, and short and long essay tests

Multiple choice tests typically have a question followed by three, four or five potential answers. The most important piece of advice about these types of questions is this: read the question carefully. Some multiple choice questions are simple, the correct answer is immediately obvious and requires virtually no thought. They are perhaps put on the test just to give everyone a little credit, no matter how much they actually know. Tackle these first and get them out of the way.

Questions which include absolutes such as "always," "never," or "every" can be tricky, because situations where these words are true are rare. "All of the above" and "none of the above" choices are often not the right choice either. Remember that all of the choices (or none of the choices) have to be true for this answer to be correct. And finally, never leave a question unanswered. Guess if you have to, but always choose an answer. You have a one in three or one in four or one in five chance of being right just by sheer chance.

True-false questions are not particularly popular with teachers, simply because you have a fifty-fifty chance of being correct just by guessing. But if you do run into a T-F question, remember that the odds are one in two that you'll get it right, even if you are clueless about what the correct answer is. Since you probably have at least some knowledge about the subject matter, your odds are better than that. One of the choices will probably look more correct than the other.

Matching questions can be tricky, especially if you don't read the directions carefully. You may be asked to match items that are different or opposite one another, rather than match things which are the same. As with multiple choice, do the easy matches first. This gets some of the clutter out of the way, gives you a sense of confidence, and saves some time. And by eliminating some answers, it increases the odds that you can simply guess and be correct.

Short essay questions are fairly popular with teachers. Answers to short essay questions need to be just that: short and to the point. You don't have the option to ramble on here, hoping that the teacher will confuse quantity with quality. You need to demonstrate that you understand the topic and can extrapolate from general to specific knowledge. Use examples whenever possible, and draw conclusions. "The Battle of Hastings in 1066 changed European (and world) history because....." "Hydrogen and Oxygen combine easily to form the water molecule because...." "Hemmingway is recognized as a great writer because...."

Long essay questions can be thought of as more detailed versions of short essay questions, and to some extent that is true. But because they are longer, they require a much deeper understanding of the material, and probably better writing and organizational skills. Perhaps the best way to learn to cope with long essay questions is to review what other students have written. You teacher may make these available if you ask, or perhaps there are some on file in either the department office or in the library. Students who have already taken the class can be another source of old essay questions. You will need to look at both good essays and bad ones, and you need to recognize what makes one essay a success while another is a failure.

After the test

Tests can be very nerve-wracking, and most adult students dread them. You can't avoid them, however, so you have to prepare yourself to do the best you can, take the test and get on with the rest of class.

But after you take the test and the grade is back, you should probably chat a bit with your instructor about that test, regardless of what kind of grade you received. Try to find out how you can improve your test-taking style or why you went wrong in certain areas. Don't try to get the teacher to change your grade: it's a tacky request that will just make you look bad. Your long-term interest here is in learning, and getting a better handle on your test-taking skills can help you do that.

"If it's multiple choice or true-false or short answer, I can do those. But if it's essays, I have to have a computer."
Deanne L. is disabled with repetitive motion injury. That didn't stop her from graduating with a 3.76 GPA.

Ask for a different testing strategy - you might be surprised.

Adults learn differently than younger students. And adults learn differently from each other, as you discovered when you took the Learning Styles Inventory in Chapter 14. Given that fact, you might be confronted with testing styles that you are just not comfortable with.

However you learn, it never hurts to ask your instructor if they could accommodate a different testing strategy. Is there another way that you could demonstrate that you've learned the material? All they can say is no.

"One evening an adult student came to me and said, I haven't been able to sleep the last few nights. I dreamed that I got a B in a course. Oh? What does that mean, I asked. She said, well, I've got a perfect 4.0 average. I dreamed I got a B. It was a nightmare!"
Bill Sigismond, head of the Office of Experiential and Adult Learning at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY, commenting on the standards adults often set for themselves in college.

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