16.6 What’s on the exam? How do I prepare for the test?

As part of preparing students to write an exam, you should provide clear information about what topics will be covered on the exam, and what types of questions they can expect. This information should flow from your course outcomes, which determine the most appropriate format and the content that should be studied for the exam (see drafting an exam for more information on this). However, it can be challenging to provide the appropriate level of information so that the average student is prepared and not surprised by the content of the exam, and they are not given to many specifics that would invalidate the effectiveness of the testing itself.

What is appropriate information will depend on your objectives. For example, setting aside any judgement as to whether this is a reasonable use of student and instructor time, if the goal is for students to memorize certain facts, they should know that memorization will be on the final. For example, if the students are expected to memorize the five stages of a process, it could be quite appropriate to directly tell students that there will be a set of questions focused on definitions and memorization. Whereas, if an outcome is that students should demonstrate their ability to decode a given problem and provide a solution in a given amount of time, the instructor would not want to provide the specific question that will be asked. They should however, be able to provide sufficient guidance that the students know that they will be solving this type of general question on the exam. As the course’s formative assessments should be aligned with the course objectives, there should be some similarity between the types of questions asked as formative assessments and those asked on a final exam. Students should have the opportunity to practice with the knowledge and skills on which they will be tested.

Students will ask many questions during lectures, and also during office hours, as to what is on the exam. As course instructor, you should be prepared to answer these questions in a consistent manner, taking into account your decisions about how much is an appropriate amount of information that should be given. Being willing to spend some class time going over the exam structure can save repeating information to many people in office hours, helps all students prepare, not just those that ask, and allows for greater consistency.

As part of this process, some students will ask questions with the goal of having you give additional information about the exam, “fishing for information”, in order to reduce the challenge of the exam questions. So, your goal is to ensure that this does not result in additional information that you did not want to disclose, being given to the student. While it can “spoil” an assessment if the information is given to all students, it is particularly problematic if the information is given to only one student as they then have an unfair advantage. Thus, you need to have a clear idea as to how you are going to answer all student questions in this regard, and find a way to be consistent.

• Point about reuse. If you reuse a question it is your problem when the student asks that exact or similar question to be solved as exam practice. It is inappropriate to avoid answering the question by doing something like asking for another question to be solved in a pre-exam help session; it is making the instructors’ choice the students’ problem.

Suggestions…

• When preparing for the discussion of what is on the exam, you can present students with a list of topics. Specify that it is not an exhaustive list. However, you should have made sure that all major topics are listed.
• Details that are not covered should be only a small number of marks and should not form a critical piece of any question.
• Typically, students will ask about the number of marks, which is a meaningless amount since one could scale the exam to any number of marks. However, what they are really asking is to have a sense of the effort needed to complete the exam, where an exam out of 100 means one has to do about 100 things, or there might be one mark per minute. They might also view an exam out of 50 as requiring less effort. Generally this question can be answered with a range based on amount of time per mark * exam time, or can be done by referring to old exams or assignments; for example, for a midterm say it is historically 70-85 marks, for a typical 2.5 hr final say it is historically 90-120 marks.
• The goal is to both have a clear picture in your head as to how you are going to answer questions from the students, and also have concrete examples you can point to. These can include assignment questions, lab questions, or old exams that you have provided for them for practice.
• This means that you can give specific examples that are not the ones on your exam. Your goal is to give helpful responses that point to existing resources that are available to all of the students. In this way you are helping them prepare and you are also not “giving anything away” about the specifics of your exam.
• This means that you can give specific examples that are not the ones on your exam. Your goal is to give helpful responses that point to existing resources that are available to all of the students. In this way you are helping them prepare and you are also not “giving anything away” about the specifics of your exam.

• Use “historically” a lot while making it clear how things have changed from previous operations.
• Generally try to be enthusiastic about every question and to give the same amount of detail, thus don’t favour any particular question over another.
• Stick to your predefined importance of the content; since importance is inherent in terms of how many marks are given for a question or part of a question, then simply refer to an old question.
• Students fishing are watching for everything in terms of your reaction, so practice being equally helpful and being equally welcome to every question event if it is being repeated several times.
• Make sure that if Q&A is given as part of summary that you get through the entire summary (and that if you have a summary you have left lots of time for Q&A and that your pacing for the summary is as expected because otherwise you’ll have to cut topics at the end of the summary and the students will know they are not on the exam, or will be given the false impression that they are not on the exam).
• Keep to the script because it keeps things fair, but it also helps in the event of a dispute with a student who will claim after the exam occurs that you said something.
• Students are generally happy with what is perceived to be open, full disclosure happily given by the instructor. They can sense when you are sincerely trying to help them understand what is, and is not on the exam and what are reasonable ways to ask questions about a course topic

Further reading

• Pressley, M., Yokoi, L., van Meter, P., van Etten, S., and G. Freebern (1997) Some of the Reasons Why Preparing for Exams Is So Hard: What Can Be Done to Make It Easier? Educational Psychology Review, 9, 1, 1997.