One of the most effective exam techniques I have seen, which is uncommon in my country but maybe common elsewhere, is oral exams. I TA’d for a German professor who did them for his stat/ML course, and so got to sit in on all of them (I also took the course myself in an earlier year so had the experience as a student as well). The process was:
1. Give students a list of about 100 questions in advance, more than you could memorise. Some were simple like “write down the formula for X”, some were more complex like “derive the backprop update algorithm”.
2. Pick the first question difficulty based on the student’s assignment grades
3. If they go to it right, pick a harder question, otherwise an easier one. If you aren’t sure whether they really understand, interrogate them about the answer, ask follow up questions etc.
4. Choose a grade based on which questions they got right.
Firstly this was highly effective at making students actually learn the material because most were worried enough about embarrassing themselves in front of the professor that they prepared well. But also, it was extremely fair because it’s essentially impossible to cheat and fake what you know.
I suspect many professors would avoid this because it’s harder to justify the grades at the end to a third party. But if you record the exams, and the student is clearly failing to answer simple questions, it’s quite hard for them to argue they were treated unfairly.
Of all the written exams I’ve seen and taken, I’ve never seen a process as fair or effective as these oral exams.
To back this up - I went through the oral exam experience on both sides (student and TA) with two different German professors and it worked incredibly well. We offered oral exams as a remedy for a few situations:
- suspected/known cheaters
- students who missed exams due to illness
- times in the course where we needed to get a good grip on whether our students understood the coursework the way we'd taught it
It was scary for a lot of students, especially the ones without great English, but it was always, in my view, incredibly fair.
edit: based on your comment history you're also in Australia - I have a feeling we might be talking about the same place :)
1. Give students a list of about 100 questions in advance, more than you could memorise. Some were simple like “write down the formula for X”, some were more complex like “derive the backprop update algorithm”.
2. Pick the first question difficulty based on the student’s assignment grades
3. If they go to it right, pick a harder question, otherwise an easier one. If you aren’t sure whether they really understand, interrogate them about the answer, ask follow up questions etc.
4. Choose a grade based on which questions they got right.
Firstly this was highly effective at making students actually learn the material because most were worried enough about embarrassing themselves in front of the professor that they prepared well. But also, it was extremely fair because it’s essentially impossible to cheat and fake what you know.
I suspect many professors would avoid this because it’s harder to justify the grades at the end to a third party. But if you record the exams, and the student is clearly failing to answer simple questions, it’s quite hard for them to argue they were treated unfairly.
Of all the written exams I’ve seen and taken, I’ve never seen a process as fair or effective as these oral exams.
- suspected/known cheaters - students who missed exams due to illness - times in the course where we needed to get a good grip on whether our students understood the coursework the way we'd taught it
It was scary for a lot of students, especially the ones without great English, but it was always, in my view, incredibly fair.
edit: based on your comment history you're also in Australia - I have a feeling we might be talking about the same place :)