Exams aren’t the only way for students to show what they have learned in a class. Project-based assessments offer students opportunities to go deep with a topic of interest and, thus, foster student motivation and a longer period of engagement. In addition, project-based assessments require students to use higher order cognitive skills. Dr. Beth Jakob, Professor in Biology and Associate Dean for Student Success, Graduate School, explains how she has replaced the exam-based assessments in her 500-level course of about 50 students with creative, multimodal student projects to foster her students’ interest, creativity, and joy for learning.
What motivated you to replace exam/quiz-based assessments with these creative projects that you call “Behavior Explainers”?
I was ready for a change from traditional exams. I teach animal behavior, which offers a terrific opportunity to use interesting examples to tie together a lot of ideas in biology, from neuroscience to evolution. In previous semesters, as the exams approached, I could see the students shift from asking questions out of interest to focusing only on what to learn for the exam. In one of my other roles, I mentor graduate student Teaching Fellows who teach first-year seminars, and I realized that I could stand to follow more of the advice I give them. We encourage the Fellows to foster student interest, creativity, and joy in their seminars, and last year we also focused on helping undergraduate students overcome the burnout and social isolation of the pandemic years. I realized that my juniors and seniors would appreciate the same opportunities. So, I was already open to innovative ideas when I happened to see on Twitter a cool idea for animal behavior 'non-tests' by Professor Robin Tinghitella. I called them "Behavior Explainers" instead, thanks to a colleague's suggestion.
What exactly did you ask your students to do?
I asked them to explain a concept from one of the topics we covered in class, using any medium they wished, including art, poetry, PowerPoint, video, or even writing an exam based on the material. They were to expand beyond what we studied in class to include concepts from at least two sources in the primary scientific literature. The Behavior Explainers needed to be accompanied by a one-page scientific summary in which the science was clearly explained. I also assigned every student to review two other Behavior Explainers covering different topics, and to find primary literature that could be used to expand those.
What guidance did you provide for your students and how did you evaluate the projects?
Honestly, at first it was hard to know what to expect, and I was clear with the students that it was an experiment! Professor Tinghitella had posted some examples, and I described my expectations as clearly as I could (see folder of materials). I devoted time in class to taking questions and offered a few minutes on multiple occasions for students to talk to each other about their developing projects. I used a detailed rubric based on Prof. Tinghitella's example (including an explanation of Bloom's Taxonomy, with explicit instructions to try to hit the top level).
How did your students respond to this different type of assessment?
At first, they were anxious about it—one student said, "But I already know how to take tests!" However, once we got through the first set, students started to really enjoy them and to get creative. When I asked about the value of the Behavior Explainers on the evaluations, the students gave them a score of 4.8/5. Students also expressed appreciation for being able to pull in some of their other talents and skills and to approach their project with a sense of humor. I had several students tell me that they tended to panic on exams, and they really appreciated the chance to show what they learned in an unusual way.
What would you say are the best things about asking students to show their learning in creative ways? Why would other instructors do something like this?
Honestly, it helped with my own pandemic exhaustion as well as that of my students. I've never been excited to open homework files before! The level and variety of creativity was great—poems, beautiful paintings on canvas, animated cartoons, "talk show" interviews with roommates about bees, and of course more typical but still beautifully done PowerPoint presentations. One of my favorites was the front page of a fictitious Russian newspaper about a famous experiment in behavioral genetics of foxes. I found myself showing them to my colleagues—I've never done that with an exam! It was clear that students really appreciated the opportunity to dive into learning more about a topic they loved. I think if I asked most of these students about the details of their projects in two years, they would be able to tell me—I felt like they really got material into long-term memory. I also got to know the students much better than I had before, which was a pleasure. You can see some example work here.
What considerations or tips do you have for other instructors who might want to use more creative ways of assessing student learning?
I think my course—a 500 level course of about 50 students—was a good venue to try something like this. The grading was intense, especially for the first two projects when it was important to give detailed feedback. It's also a class that's not a prerequisite for anything else, which was helpful, because the students sacrificed some breadth for depth. However, the fact that they had to get into the primary literature both for the Behavior Explainers and their responses to other students' Explainers aligned with one of my goals for this course—to get upper-level students more comfortable with reading the literature. One concern I had was that I think that students could too easily skip over material that they were not doing their Explainer on, and I'm currently thinking about how to incorporate short, low-stakes questions to keep everyone on track throughout the course.