Pay the People What They are Worth

By Dr. Edwin Weaver

January 26, 2009

We all want to be paid for all the work we do and when we are not paid, we feel cheated. When that happens, usually, we will avoid that type of work in the future. The same hold true in education.

What does your scoring say to the students? How you weight quizzes and exams marks sends a strong message to your students. You may think you are being fair and equal about everything, but is that how the student sees it.

At the university where I worked teaching English, the program director wanted the four main language skills weighted the same (reading, writing, language knowledge and listening). This sounded fair and correct, however the way that the university assessed these four skills were different.

To assess the language knowledge (vocabulary) the students received multiple-choice questions, memory level, not much work required. To assess listening, the student listens to a taped conversation and answered mostly multiple-choice and true/false questions. Even the assessment of the reading skill used multiple-choice questions.

Now, the writing is entirely different. The students had to write a 500-word essay. The essay was based on a question, which was related to the reading and listening component. Connecting the writing task to the listen and reading is great however, the students must write 500 words or more. This requires much more work than answering multiple-choice and true/false questions, not to mention you are incorporating the listening task and reading task.

Each section of the exam received the same amount of marks. The exam consisted of 20 questions from language knowledge, the 25 questions from reading, the 20 questions from listening, and the 500-word essay (with an outline). Each section, Language Knowledge, Listening, Reading and Writing all received the same amount of marks; 25% of the value of the mid-term or final exam (the final exam for Foundation year was 50% of their final grade and the mid-term was 25% of the final grade).

Here is the question to my fellow educators. How do you suppose this affects the students? Knowing that the amount of work required for writing an essay has no more value than answering multiple-choice and true/false questions, where would you devote you efforts.

Of course, the students concentrate on the first three sections and if time permits, they go to the writing section and write something. I have invigilated many of these exams and watched the students ignore the writing section and concentrate on the solving the multiple-choice questions. Afterwards they would spend 10 to 20 minutes writing something, often not even answering the question.

Their actions made a clear declaration that they did not value the writing section because it was not worth it. I followed up my theory by giving the students of my classes and two other classes a survey. The results showed that the students felt that 1) the writing took too much time, 2) they could score higher by focusing on the multiple-choice questions, and most importantly that 3) they would attempt to write the essay if the value was higher on the exams.

This attitude also affected their learning. Attempting to teach these students how to write well was very difficult. They did not see a need for it. They felt they could pass the course without learning how to write well.

Attempting to be fair, we have de-motivated the students in a particular skill. Looking at this true-life example may give you some insights on your own classes.

How do you weigh the different tasks the students perform? How do the students perceive the marking? In our case, we performed a survey to gather data on student’s perception to the different tasks and the value of each of those tasks. This told us that if we wanted to promote all four language skills we had to change the weighting to create an environment where the students applied themselves equally to all four skills.

Analyzing the impact of our assessments is very important for the continued success of our students. Take a look at how you assess your students, how you mark the assessments and the weight you assign to each task and ask yourself and your students if it is fair. Ask them to rate each task in order of preference and explain their preference. You may be surprised at the answers you get.

EDU - TALK