Confidence

One reason to subject students to “exam conditions” is that it offers them an opportunity to experience what they are capable of. Obviously, the conditions must be reasonable and the prompt must be relevant to the course. But this is is easy to ensure by giving students, say, three hours to compose a thousand words of coherent prose that answers a question they have been equipped to understand. The mere fact that (or degree to which) they understand the question gives them an initial indication of their mastery of the subject. The knowledge needed to answer the question that be acquired through, well, study, including reading, attending lectures, participating in discussions with fellow students, both in and out of class, and carefully thinking things through. The ability to compose two and half pages of prose in two and a half hours can be developed through deliberate practice during the semester, one composed moment at a time. We typically give our students 12 to 16 weeks to master…