Let’s begin the new year with a nuts and bolts educational issue. (My New Year’s Resolution is to say less about hot-button political issues and make fewer needless enemies…). In this post I consider the place of final exams. In the next post I consider the place of lectures in teaching.

Exams vs. projects? UbD is agnostic about many educational practices, be they final exams or projects.  Yet, we often get queries such as these two recent ones: what’s the official UbD position, if any, on final exams? Should we be doing more hands-on projects if we’re doing UbD? The glib answer: no technique is inherently sacred or profane; what matters is how exams and projects are shaped, timed, and assessed – mindful of course goals. As you’ll see below, I think we tend to fixate on the format instead of worrying about the key question: regardless of format…

I just finished reading a post from my good friend and co-author of The Relevant Educator, Steve Anderson. His recent post, “Why Formative Assessments Matter” got me thinking about assessments in general and how often they are misunderstood and often abused by well-meaning educators.

We have all been taught that there are two categories of assessment, Formative and Summative. Formative assessment is done during a particular lesson to gauge student learning and understanding as the lesson progresses. This often takes the form of quizzes, but there are less formal forms that are as effective. The summative assessment is usually, but not always an exam of some type. It is to determine how much the student learned and understood from the overall experience. This could be a unit exam with various types of questions, or possibly some type of report done by the student.

With my education students I would…