10.22.06
Mitchell, N., and Melton, S. (2003). Collaborative testing: An innovative approach to test taking. Nurse Educator, 28(2), pp. 95-7.
Mitchell, N., and Melton, S. (2003). Collaborative testing: An innovative approach to test taking. Nurse Educator, 28(2), pp. 95-7.
This is about the use of collaborative testing to decrease anxiety and increase learning among nursing students. Students take the test then have a period of time (10 minutes in this case) where they can discuss answers with a partner and change answers if they see fit. The exams are graded in such a way that any answers changed in the collaboration period are not worth as much as original answers. They tried this cooperative method because of the author’s reading of educational research, the anxiety, and poor results of nursing students on certain subjects, and the cooperative nature of being a nurse. The authors found increased performance, decreased anxiety, and increased study time when collaborative testing was employed. The authors go on to talk about cooperative testing in other disciplines.
So, healthcare learning, yes. This article takes me back to my days as a grader in a dental school. Yes, those students would have liked a collaborative test. I know I did. I actually had a collaborative math test once in high school. I had always wondered whether anyone else did that sort of thing. It does certainly take down the anxiety. There’s always the problem of student evaluation (which pops up in all cooperative learning). Interestingly enough we were just discussing this issue in TE 150. I had our class discuss whether it was more, less, or just as important to know what a student could do on his/her own (Piaget) or to know what a student could do with help (Vygotsky and ZPD). Evaluation does center on this debate
