Choose Your Own
Exam Questions
> 1 hour
How to use the tool?
Allow students to choose exam questions. This makes exams more meaningful and helps students go deeper into course content.
Student experience
"It took me some time to “get” this exam system, but then it gave me a sense of agency and control that really benefited my learning”
Allowing students to choose exam questions makes exams more meaningful and helps students go deeper into course content.
What to Do?
Give students a choice in which exam questions they want to answer.
Example:
“In a course with an essay exam at the end, the exam consisted of 12 questions that mapped on roughly to the 12 main topics covered in the course. Students were then required to answer three questions in the exam. In effect, this meant they had to prepare for answering four or five in enough depth to write essays about them, to allow for the fact that some questions addressed aspects of a topic they did not feel confident in. Because this structure was known to students at the start of the course, they could prioritise topics during the course they were most interested in (though I also had mini-quizzes throughout the course to ensure the students understood the basics of all topics).
