In the essay, "More Testing, More Learning," Patrick O'Malley claims that professors should give more frequent short exams to students rather than common midterm and final exams. O'Malley proposes that it will encourage students to study often and study more and students perform better. From a study of Harvard students, getting frequent test and quiz gives them "many opportunities to see how they are doing". What's more, O'Malley emphasizes the significance of feedback and personal evaluation and states that higher grades from students who procrastinate less. O'Malley also presents main opposite arguments against his proposal – that it would take too much time to read and grade for professors, that it would take away lecture time, especially for short classes, and that students will have to learn new knowledge by themselves when there is not enough time for lectures. However, O'Malley then gives several alternatives to these objections. For instance, school should implement a program which teaches study skills, professors should provide frequent study questions from which the exam questions will be selected at the beginning of the course. Ultimately, O'Malley concludes that brief in-class exam is the only way to improve study habits and reduce anxiety and procrastination.
Text-Based Analysis.
Though frequent short exam and quiz are extremely complicated, I still agree some viewpoints about this proposal. I can't agree more with what he said, "The right way to learn new material needs to become a habit.to developing good habits of study and learning." It's obvious that some students will develop the good habit if they are given short exam every week. But is it cost too much? First, all students have different learning capabilities and study styles. Giving frequent short exams every week may not have the same effect on all students. That means some waste of study resources.
