Exam Technique - An Assumed Skill?

GCSE v A-Level?

  All teachers do exam practice but do they spend long enough on the skill rather than the practice? I see it every year, the queue for the photocopier grows and staff are in earlier to beat the rush. Exam practice happens but I'm not convinced it is something we craft as well as our subject content. We all go through the "common misconceptions" and "highly likely questions" but do we delve deeply enough into "Read The Question"? We write RTQ often enough in the margin, maybe we should spend more time with the basics. I will make a distinction; GCSE exam questions are on the whole much more explicit than A-Level ones. I will focus on A-Level in this post but it is not to say that the lessons learnt will not help GCSE's, in fact I am applying the same techniques right now to my classes to help them reach the A*'s more frequently. While I am not going to address the contentious issue of teaching to the exam, I will simply state it is simply a necessary evil while exams are the current method of assessment. I am going to walk you through the ideas behind a piece or research I undertook that had a dramatic impact on my results.

All teachers do exam practice but do they spend long enough on the skill rather than the practice?

The problem

  I teach an even spread of girls and boys at A-Level for ICT. The course is split into 4 modules which myself and my colleague split. Each of us experienced the same issue when we started the course, a specific exam module, separately for both of us, had caused us the same issue. The students were under performing on the exam component. We changed the delivery of the content in the first year while attending courses to make sure we were not missing anything and the same the second year. Thankfully the other module for each of us was countering the issue and students were achieving their target grades but we were used to better results previous to this course. We struggled with why the students were finding the questions difficult. We knew our IT content and their previous knowledge was good, not in an arrogant way but because the boys we taught came from our partner school and were having the same issues. The knowledge was there but they were constantly being caught out with questions that deviated in any small way from the past papers they had practiced. I had a thought, I suspected that while they have practiced questions in all their subjects the skill of seeing the implicit hints and clues in A-Level questions was lacking. I needed to spend significant time teaching the skill at the expense of the course content. It was a risk but one I thought work taking.

they were constantly being caught out with questions that deviated in any small way from the past papers

The Plan

  To separate the skill from the knowledge I decided to spend a good deal of curriculum time on topics completely unconnected to ICT. An example would be: [blockquote text="That Summer the fence that stretched through our town seemed bigger. We lived in a yellow house on one side of it. White people lived on the other. And Mama said, “Don’t climb over that fence when you play.” She said it wasn’t safe. What can I infer from the text?" text_color="" width="" line_height="undefined" background_color="" border_color="" show_quote_icon="no" quote_icon_color=""] We had a very long discussion about this. At what point in time did we think this occurred? Where in the world is this set? What is going on? Students were enjoying picking apart these questions, after each iteration I started to add a sneaky element of ICT into them until we were fully fledged into past paper questions. Students would revel in their new found ability to pick apart questions. The problem became how to all the ideas into the answer.

Students were enjoying picking apart these questions

The Stats

  In our first year we added zero value, effectively doing exactly what we were supposed to, get them their predicted grade but we were used to much higher scores at GCSE. When we break down the scores into gender there is no significant difference between them. So with gender bias not a factor as well as school bias being negligible (male students came from a different school) we were in quite a good place for some statistical analysis. Following the experiment we went to 0.5 value added, on average half a grade extra for every student. When you consider that Catholic schools targets are 0.2 we think this has been a great success. Standard AS retakes have become a rarity rather than common place.

on average half a grade extra for every student

Summary

  Now the problem of the suspect modules has disappeared we are back to adding significant value, but we still have to spend a great deal of time teaching the skill of implicit questioning at the expense of the course content. You could now argue this is an English exam firstly with an ICT exam bolted on. I teach some real geeks, they know more that your average IT professional but fall at this first hurdle. So are exams the right format to test ICT? I would argue no. Project work that is teacher assessed is the only way but teachers are not trusted with coursework anymore. With Computer Science teachers being rarer than rocking horse.... stuff.... it is difficult to externally moderate. It is also suggested that given a chance schools will manipulate the system to advantage their students and therefore the school (not sure which the pressure is applied to teachers for first). So we have what we have and it is unlikely to change in the immediate future so lets at least arm our students with the right weapons... weapons of exam comprehension.

You could now argue this is an English exam firstly with an ICT exam bolted on

Appendix

Easy Explicit Questions

So what was the detail? I didn't concern myself with the straight forward explicit questions in exams. Below are some examples:

1. GCSE Short Answer

State the name of the method of sending an email to more than one person at the same time without the original recipient knowing. (1 mark)

As you can see, the question is extremely explicit, it wants a specific answer to the clearly defined question. If you didn't know, the answer is Blind Carbon Copy (BCC). The thing in your email you may never use, under CC (no guesses from what that stands for now!).

2. GCSE Long Answer 

A school is putting on a play. Word Processing software is used to create letters that will be sent to parents to inform them of the dates of the production. State five other different types of software and for each software type, describe a different example of how the software could be used in organising the play. (10 marks)

Even this long answer question is mostly explicit, it is after 5 separate software types with an example. The only 'hidden'/implicit information is the fact it has to be in relation to a play and that 5 software names with 5 examples makes the 10 marks. Not rocket science and well within the scope of most students.

3. A-Level Short Answer

Describe why a regular computer user needs a height-adjustable chair when they are working with ICT. (2 marks)

This question is explicit about the chair but implicitly if you do not mention Health & Safety in some form you will not score. In fact the implicit question is really name what can happen if you don't use a height adjustable chair and why does that fact it adjusts solve this. We are now entering the world of 'hidden' questions. I use the word 'hidden' glibly as questions/problems in the real world are not often explicit and that is the reasoning behind the style of question at A-Level. I agree whole heartily with it but they now make you work harder for the smaller marks.

'Hidden' Implicit Questions

  At A-Level things escalate. I've always told students that the differential between GCSE and A-Level is the largest they will face. Degrees specialise but I never found them to demand such a mind shift jump as it does between the age of 16-18.

that escalated quickly - Ron Burgundy

 4. A-Level Long Answer 

To be of any use at all a computer has to be able to take input, yet this basic idea can easily escape the modern computer user.
It seems hard to believe that all computer input devices had once to be literally hardwired, for example, a scanner. Today there is a wide range of input devices available. For example, in computer gaming, a character can be controlled directly by the electrical impulses from a player’s brain without the need for wires.
Discuss the above with reference to the range of input devices currently available. Your answer should include examples of where and how input devices can be used appropriately. (20 marks)

It is this long answer question, worth a staggering 2 grades, where the real impact of implicit questioning can damage a students chances of success if they are not prepared. To tackle this question we need to break down what the examiner is really after, 'luckily' we have clues. The student is supposed to understand the clues first then demonstrate their knowledge. Here the question is hinting at the following:

• "The idea can easily escape the modern computer user"
  • Translation - break the answer down into clear processes at the most simplistic level
• "input devices had once to be literally hardwired"
  • Translation - give examples of devices that used to have to be wired but are now much more portable.
• "Today there is a wide range of input devices"
  • Translation - most of the marks will be for a spread of devices rather than talking about a few in detail.
• "can be controlled directly by the electrical impulses from a player's brain"
  • Translation - give examples of emerging technologies, like speech to text, live translate...
• "without the need for wires"
  • Translation - Discuss the different types of wireless communication. Infra Red, Bluetooth and WiFi.

Teaching students to automatically pick apart a question and guess what the examiner is after is not a small task. I think we assume too much of the students and we ourselves need to be more explicit than implicit in what we want.

the real impact of implicit questioning can damage a students chances of success