“more Testing, More Learning” Patrick O’malley Critique“more Testing, More Learning” Patrick O’malley CritiqueAccording to Patrick O’Malley’s “More Testing, More Learning”, the problem is that professors normally give less frequent exams that are counted the most against a student’s grade. One of the effects he mentioned was that less frequent exams causes unnecessary amounts of stress on the student. Another one of the effects is that they don’t encourage frequent study as well as fails to inspire students’ best performance. O’Malley suggests that professors should give more frequent short exams to students. However, there are some objections to this suggestion. One is that such exams take up too much limited class time available to cover material in the course. Another objection is that short exams take too much time for professors to read and grade. Therefore, O’Malley suggested several alternatives to these objections. One of the alternatives is that the school should implement a program that would improve study skills. His second alternative is that professors should provide frequent study questions for students to answer. His final alternative is that the professors should provide frequent study questions from which the exam questions will be selected or announcing possible exam topics at the beginning of the course. However, O’Malley rejects these alternatives. He concludes that he sees frequent as well as brief exams as the only way to improve students’ study habits and learning (352-355).
On the other hand, there are some weaknesses in O’Malley’s argument towards more frequent exams. For example, frequent tests and exams may not have the same effect on all students. He mentions that by giving more frequent tests, “Students learn more in the course and perform better on major exams, projects, and papers” (353). However, all students have different learning capabilities. By giving frequent exams, one student may excel while another student may struggle due to the frequency of the exams. Also, O’Malley points out, “Greater frequency in test taking means greater frequency in studying for tests” (353). Yet, this can not be applied to all students. It depends on the student and his or her decision on whether or not to study for tests. In addition, greater frequency in test taking may instead discourage students from studying. He also adds that, “Frequent exams would also decrease anxiety by reducing the procrastination that produces anxiety” (354). Some students might feel that an increase in the frequency of exams would actually cause an increase rather than a decrease of anxiety.
Furthermore, there are also a number of weaknesses in O’Malley’s alternatives. Particularly, his alternatives either contradict his argument, or hinder the actual learning process. For example, he points out that, “If weekly exams still seem too time-consuming to some professors, their frequency could be reduced to every other week” (354). By reducing the frequency of weekly exams, it contradicts his proposal of having more frequent exams. It also causes decreased efficiency in the time management of scheduling lessons as well as assignments within the course. In addition, O’Malley says, “Another possible solution would be to help students prepare for the midterm and final exams by providing sets of questions from
. The abovementioned example of problems for the administration to correct, shows that he is quite flexible in terms of implementing his proposals.
O’Malley’s proposal will need to be implemented in some small steps.
3. The O’Malley Plan for 2015-16
It is obvious that the Obama administration is looking for a very large change in the rules for using their own website (Google or Microsoft), and the fact that their main goal is to have the website become popular, gives them the impression that they are looking for better means of communicating their ideas with the student body. They appear to be very open to new ideas from students. The problem with this concept is that the plan has already been implemented. According to some new government studies, a larger part of the web is already used for the administration and administrative support (which is why the plan, which is already implemented, is only partially successful). These new government-wide ideas do not seem as appealing. Not only they do not show success as a social problem, they seem to make sure that the new online resources are used for what they claim is the right purpose (for the educational revolution or as a way to encourage students to become more self-confident). Finally, they have not even mentioned plans for education with regard to how much of them the administration wants to spend on these new online resources. In reality, a lot of these new government-wide ideas seem to be not only too useful, but ineffective.
Therefore, because the new government wants to see the use of online resources as a way to increase education, the administration is very eager to build out new government-wide ideas to provide this benefit. They try not to make the new online resources available to people already familiar with the technology that is already being implemented. This approach does not seem to work. In fact, the administration seems to believe that this way of using online resources will work better than using the same public-education sources that are already used to educate about these topics.
It is hard not to notice that a change in the administration’s approach comes with significant implications in education in general and it seems evident that it is not in those areas that the new government plan may end.
To end this post on this last page, I would like to thank the following for taking the time to read them all. This may be their finest work: «On the Internet: The Truth About the Internet » (D. A. Thomas, M.A., PhD, DPhil, University of Washington, University of Maryland). A new edition of the website of The Washington Post published a great paper on online research entitled Learning to Learn: Toward the Digital Age and the Transformation of Society. Here is the original abstract. This piece is about this essay.
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