Collaborative exams: Cheating? Or learning?

Abstract

Virtually all human activity involves collaboration, and yet, collaboration during an examination is typically considered cheating. Collaborative assessments have not been widely adopted because of the perceived lack of individual accountability and the notion that collaboration during assessments simply causes propagation of correct answers. Hence, collaboration could help weaker students without providing much benefit to stronger students. In this paper, we examine student performance in open-ended, two-stage collaborative assessments comprised of an individually accountable round followed by an automatically scored, collaborative round. We show that collaboration entails more than just propagation of correct answers. We find greater rates of correct answers after collaboration for all students, including the strongest members of a team. We also find that half of teams that begin without a correct answer to propagate still obtain the correct answer in the collaborative round. Our findings, combined with the convenience of automatic feedback and grading of open-ended questions, provide a strong argument for adopting collaborative assessments as an integral part of education.

Two-Stage Collaborative Exams have Little Impact on Subsequent Exam Performance in Undergraduate Mathematics

“…It is interesting to note that Fig. 7 is very similar to Figure 3 of Jang et al (2017), which is interpreted as "all students (on average) gain from collaborating" (p226). Yet, the present study found that the two-stage exam had no effect on learning (as measured by a delayed post-test).…”

“…There are 90 instances of a group responding to a question at stage two, and, following Jang et al (2017), I analyse these with respect to the number of students in the group who were correct at stage one (see Fig. 2).…”

“…On the other hand, including a collaborative second stage is likely to mean that there is less time available for the individual assessment, or that time is taken away from other learning activities. There may also be concern about students benefiting unfairly from the efforts of their peers (Jang et al 2017). So, it is important to understand whether, on balance, the two-stage exam format has a positive effect.…”

Case Study: Assembling a Case Study Tool Kit: 10 Tools for Teaching With Cases

“…This is an opportunity for peer learning, and it is used to clarify concepts that students did not grasp on their own. This practice is sometimes called two-stage cooperative testing, and it has been shown to increase student engagement as well as learning for both the students who knew the material initially and those who did not (Eaton, 2009;Hollis Gilley & Clarkston, 2014;Jang, Lasry, Miller, & Mazur, 2017;Wieman, Riger, & Heiner, 2014;Zipp, 2007). Students repeat the same quiz, but this time they do it in their team and report their answers on an Immediate Feedback-Assessment Tool (IF-AT), an idea I borrowed from team-based learning (Michaelsen, Bauman Knight, & Fink, 2004).…”

A Quantitative Framework for the Analysis of Two-Stage Exams

“…Typically, two-stage exam data are analyzed by comparing the proportions of students with a correct answer for the individual and group portions of the exam as a means of estimating student gains (Cortright et al 2003;Zimbardo et al 2003;Gilley and Clarkston 2014;Fengler and Ostafichuk 2015;Bruno et al 2017;Jang et al 2017). Additionally, several studies revealed two-stage exams had positive effects on student engagement and perceptions of assessments (Cortright et al 2003;Zimbardo et al 2003;Reiger and Heiner 2014;Weiman et al 2014;Bruno et al 2017).…”