With nine chapters completed in our text during the Fall Semester, and a cumulative Final Exam next week, I gave students a choice of review formats. I could go over commonly-missed terms and concepts, and review the top-level narrative of the topics covered, or we could play a review game, featuring multiple-choice questions similar to those that will be on the Final Exam.
One class asked me to go over material for them; for that, I used the slides below.
My second class asked for the review questions; for that, I used the eClicker app on the iPad, which pushes a multiple-choice question to student iPads, and requires each student to answer the question on their own.
It will be interesting to look at the results of each class’ Final Exam scores next week (but I know no meaningful analysis will actually be possible because of the multitude of variables involved.) I hope both sets of students (who did not know what the other class had chosen) was satisfied with their review period, and got from the class period what they needed.
Personally, I’m not very satisfied with either review activity. And I just wrote about why on RestlessPedagogue.com: both are relatively passive cognitive learning activities. Neither activity really asked the students to do any heavy mental lifting. They didn’t really wrestle with much — and that’s what learning takes: effort. Bah.
What’s odd is that I think our AP Test Review packet, which we give to students roughly three weeks before the AP test, though it looks like a simple packet of worksheets, requires far more cognitively active learning activities on the part of students. They’re required to synthesize, to compare & contrast, to summarize, to rephrase, to diagram, to mindmap, to explain, to connect. If that review period is so good, why isn’t my Fall Final review better? Bah.