Unconventional teaching ideas that work: On writing fun, strange, and open ended exams (C. Thi Nguyen)

Guest post by C. Thi Nguyen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Utah Valley University. His first book, Games: Agency as Art, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. 

I try to write exam questions that are funny, startling, and open-ended. My goal is to give students a lovely note to end the class on. I want their final structured activity in my class to exemplify the virtues and joys of open-minded investigation. I give them weird questions – presenting them with funny situations, novel problems, new and thought-provoking arguments. I give them a wide range of questions to choose from, so they can pick exactly the topics that get them the most excited. And I give them questions that are open-ended – that I don’t know the answer to. And I tell them so explicitly.

The last interaction we have with our students is often that final exam. For many of our general education students, this will be the coda to their only brush with philosophy – maybe their only brush with the humanities. The final exam is the grand finale. And what taste do we want to leave them with? Do we want to leave them with the sense that philosophy is a dreary thing, forced on them from the outside? That doing philosophy is trying to meet some external standard, where what looms in their head most strongly is the sense of possible failure? Or do we want to leave them with the sense that philosophy is a live thing, that it can play with new topics — that it can, in fact, be fun?

Many philosophy teachers now agree that we should try to embody the virtues of thoughtfulness in the classroom. Instead of just laying out what we think is the right theory, we make a show of open-mindedness and thoughtfulness. We push for dialogue, we flip sides in the middle of class, we reflect and visibly enact the process of reflection. But we also usually abandon that pedagogy when it comes to exam design. I used to make boring exams, because I had assumed that the sole purpose of an exam was to assess the student’s abilities and knowledge.

One of my graduate school advisors used to caution against thinking that the only purpose of grading was to render a judgment of student abilities. Grades, she said, are another teaching tool for getting through to the student — a way of communicating to the student, of signaling to them that they’re doing better or worse. I expanded that suggestion to the design of exams themselves. Assessment is only one function of an exam. Exams are a structured activity for the student, where we direct them to think in a certain way and in certain problems. They are yet another tool we have to suggest certain intellectual attitudes. And the final exam occupies a very special place. It is the final taste they get of philosophy – what will linger in their mouths, when they think back on it. If we can use tests to get students to like philosophical reflection, to enjoy critical thinking, to feel the payoff in their get, then we should — even if it comes at the price of a complete, fair, and rigorous assessment.

So here’s the nitty gritty. I teach a lot of introductory ethics courses and introduction to philosophy courses at Utah Valley University, a large, open-enrollment university. Many of my students are first-generation college students. Most of those taking introductory ethics are doing so only to fulfill a requirement. On the very first day of class, I describe the purpose of the class, and tell them exactly what the exams will be like. I warn them, before they’re committed to the class, that the exams will be unusual.

The purpose of the class, I tell them, is primarily skills acquisition. They’re going to learn to argue, to analyze, to dissect arguments, and reflect on their own beliefs. Learning particular philosophers and theories is secondary. To that end, I tell them, all my exams have a very particular structure. One third of each exam is simple questions that check that they did the reading and came to class. These are multiple choice or short answer. The other two thirds of the exam are going to a wide array of, frankly, weird and goofy exam questions, that will throw new situations and new theories at them, and ask them to deal, on the fly, with ideas and dilemmas they’ve never heard of before the exam, by applying the theories they’ve learned. (I also tell them I’ll give them plenty of opportunity to practice thinking of their own solutions to things, especially through a set of exercises to collectively workshop their papers.)

For the actual exams: I always offer them a wide range of questions, from which they get to choose the ones they’re most interested in. And I make most of the questions open-ended. It means that I write questions that I don’t know the answer to, where I can see all sorts of arguments and approaches, and I don’t even the faintest clue of what the right answer would be. Often the questions ask them to invent new policy or a new theory. I tell them that I’m just looking for any kind of clear argument or analysis they can cook up. I have to tell them this explicitly and repeatedly. Most of my students have an incredibly hard time wrapping their heads around this concept. because otherwise they can get freaked out during the exam, when it isn’t clear what answer I’m looking for.

There’s a hidden sting here, of course. Take a question like, “What would Aristotle and Susan Wolf think of Instagram culture, and what advice they would give for us for living with social media. Which do you think is closer to the truth, and why?” In order to answer that, they’d first need to, of course, supply an adequate summary of the relevant bits of Aristotle and Wolf’s theories of ethics and value. But the important part is that the end-points of the analysis are up to them. They get to figure out what Aristotle would actually think of Instagram culture, which is a pretty hefty and substantial extension of what they learned in class. And, of course, they get to pick a side.

The point is the spirit that the question conveys. First, the question conveys that a sense of the flexibility of philosophy, and its ready applicability. Second, it gives students a sense that they have some intellectual agency in the matter. And third, I hope that the novelty of the questions, and the broadness of the topics, will hopefully inspire a sense of curiosity and excitement. It will, I hope, leave them with a sense that the philosophical theories we’ve learned are alive, and flexible, and that pulling them as life throws them new dilemmas will be fruitful, and joyous.

I offer them lots of questions. Like I’ll offer them ten possible questions, from which they get to choose three. Again: the point is to move away from the sense that the point of the exam is to catch them out and trap them for what they missed, and encourage, instead, a sense that the exam is letting them exercise their own curiosity and interest. They get to choose to write where their strengths are — that they get to pick which topics jazz them up the most. (I also offer some very straightforward, traditional questions. The vast majority of the students prefer the novel questions, but a small number are afraid of them, and prefer about straight-up regurgitation questions. I also tell them that the standards of precision are higher for regurgitation questions, and that I’m more forgiving for the creative questions. Students seem to accept this as fair.)

And this is where, I think, we have to make a bit of a trade-off between assessment and inspiration. This kind of exam does not do as well as a traditional exam in assessing the completeness of a student’s knowledge. A student who never learned a couple of philosophers theories can certainly game the question set to avoid them. (Though, if you fix the range of theories attached to each question cleverly enough, then they can’t get away with an excessive number of gaps.) But the goofy questions are actually surprisingly easy to assess. A student’s critical thinking capacity is on clear display when they have to cope with a novel topic. And the more you leave room for students to be inventive, you might discover that your students can actually surprise the hell out of you. I am, in the grading process, occasionally entertained, and even inspired.

My questions vary in their style of novelty. Some are obvious variants of in-class examples, but with a bit of spin and silliness on them. (“Suppose the Fox Network proposes a new reality show where they’ll let felons fight to the death on live TV, but they promise to donate half the proceeds to anti-crime charities. What would philosophers X, Y, and Z think of this solution, and why?”) Some of the questions are genuinely and deeply weird. (“Suppose genetic engineers propose to solve the problem of animal rights by creating a new species of cow that desperately wants to be eaten, and begs for it…”) Some of the questions introduce some new subtlety to a case they know of. Some of the questions present radical policy proposals, that they haven’t heard of before, but which they can apply what they learned in class too. (I typically steal these from applied and political policy. Like: “Certain crazy philosophers out there think we should stop voting, because the system can be gamed by money and power, and just pick our leaders through random lotteries…”)

The questions are meant to be goofy, be weird, be novel, and present genuinely fascinating thickets and tangles – and to offer them an enjoyably wide choice space of different types of goofiness. No question can do all these things. But the point is for an exam to present them with a menu of possibilities. Then, their experience of an exam, especially of a final exam, is not one of authoritary and fear, but of possibility and of choice. The final exam is supposed to be an opportunity for them to exercise their intellectual curiosity.

And the results are delightful. I get a steady stream of students coming up to me after the final exam, with a vague look of pleasant bewilderment on their faces, to confess to me that they had, against all expectation, enjoyed the exam. They tell me they found it interesting, that they had fun, that they found the questions exciting and thought-provoking. Sometimes they wanted to meet with me later to talk about the exam questions, just to find out more. I hear students in the hallways after the exam still working out what the answer should be. They leave excited, with their appetites whetted for more.

And that seems pretty important to me.

 

Comments

[elisa freschi]

Many thanks for sharing this experience. I will certainly try it out next January (and comment again with the results).

[Marcus Arvan]

Really neat - I think my exams are pretty dreary and that I should probably try this out. Your approach requires far more than regurgitation - it requires students to demonstrate real understanding, and the ability to apply theories and arguments to novel cases in everyday life. Thanks for sharing!

[Kate Norlock]

This is great, and I'd add that the week-to-week content mastery can be captured by in-class or online quizzes or very-short-answer homework. My students report finding that ten-item quizzes DO motivate them to get on top of the basics of each reading, and it frees me up from thinking that larger projects have to test their knowledge of all the theories. Knowledge of theoretical aspects is for quizzes, so that I can instead assign reflection, practice, evaluation, and consideration of implications of a view for bigger projects.