Create a More Integrated Approach to Testing: A Magna Online Seminar | Magna Publications

Online Seminar: Featuring strategies to help teaching faculty create a richer learning experience for students.

Photo: Magna Publications

When it comes time for exams, there’s one question that is top of mind for students:

“How do I get the best grade?”

In response, they study for the test, which often involves memorizing key concepts from the course. They take the exam. Finally, they find their posted score and then listen casually as the teacher reviews the answers they may have missed.

There’s a serious problem with this scenario . . .

When exams are treated as isolated events, the focus is on generating grades instead of creating a deeper learning environment.

It’s time for a paradigm shift in the exam experience, and it begins with making simple changes to our teaching techniques.

Our new online seminar, An Integrated Approach to Student Exams, is designed to help teaching faculty see exams from a new perspective.

We’ll look at simple strategies faculty can use every day, whether online or in the classroom, to ensure exams are not simply perceived as grade-generating mechanisms but instead recognized as enriched learning tools that will have a significant impact on student success.

Seminar participants will engage in the following activities:

• Explore ways to make exams richer learning experiences
• Design exam experiences so that they encourage the development of good study skills
• Develop strategies that encourage students to take responsibility for exam preparation and performance

We’re presenting a more integrated approach to testing.

Following the ideas and advice provided by esteemed teaching expert Maryellen Weimer, PhD, participants will discuss concrete strategies in a conversational format, which they can immediately apply to the classroom setting.

You will learn ways to accomplish the following:

• Modify instruction
• Improve quizzing methods
• Engage students to achieve deeper learning

This is how students become better learners. And this is how we encourage them to achieve better grades.

Don’t miss the early-bird discount. Sign up by January 12, 2017, and pay only $247. Register today.

Get to Know Maryellen Weimer

Photo: Maryellen Weimer

I would be a much better teacher then had I known what I know now.” –Maryellen Weimer

Maryellen Weimer has always been interested in the exam experience, but she recognizes a particular urgency now that she didn’t identify when she was teaching full time. She believes we need to make a paradigm shift in how both faculty and students approach exams. And it begins with An Integrated Approach to Student Exams.

Weimer has edited The Teaching Professor newsletter since 1987 and writes the “Teaching Professor” blog. She is a professor emerita of teaching and learning at Penn State Berks and won Penn State's Milton S. Eisenhower award for distinguished teaching in 2005.

Source: Magna Publications