Media Studies Cooperative Exams Usually Disastrous Result The Cooperative Exam Will Encourage More Serious Attitude The

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RATIONALE FOR COOPERATIVE EXAMS

We recognize that allowing students to work cooperatively on an examination takes

getting used to (it’s normally called cheating), especially if you have been testing

students for years in more usual ways. Our premise is simple: if cooperation is

advantageous (as demonstrated in the text), and if group synergy is desirable, then a

system of examination that promotes both cooperation and synergy is not only

philosophically justifiable, it should be enthusiastically encouraged.

Response to Common Objections

I. Won’t cooperating on a test allow loafers to obtain high grades without putting in

any effort to learn? This would be true if there were no accountability factor in the

II. Won’t cooperative tests inflate student grades? Cooperative tests have been used at

Cabrillo College for more than a dozen years by numerous instructors in more than

NOTE: The difficulty of the cooperative exam can always be adjusted by asking

tougher questions if an instructor decides the scores are too high. The accountability

factor can also be adjusted (see explanation of procedure below).

III. Won’t students learn less because they will rely on others to share the burden of

studying? On the contrary, motivated students do not want to risk relying on others

IV. Won’t cooperative tests foster bickering and divisiveness when group members

disagree on the correct answer to a question? If you allow groups to drop one

V. Won’t this encourage dominant members to bully the group into answering questions

according to what the dominant members believe are the correct answers? Our

Testing Procedure

I. Time required for test: approximately 30 minutes for cooperative exam and an

additional 10 minutes for the individual accountability exam, which follows

immediately after.

II. Format and material covered in each cooperative exam:

A. Cooperative Test #1 : this test will cover the first three chapters of the text. The

format will be multiple-choice and true-false. Multiple-choice questions will

B. Cooperative Test #2: this test will cover Chapters 4 through 6. The same

procedure

used for Cooperative Test #ONE will be used for this test except each false

answer will require an explanation.

III. Giving and grading the cooperative exam

A. Each group (5 to 7 members) will take the test together without benefit of notes

or text. Although each group member will be given a copy of the test, only a

single designated copy will serve as the group’s final answer sheet.

B. Each group member must sign his or her name on the group answer sheet.

C. Individual Accountability – Individual accountability is determined by a second

test

(immediately following the group test) given to all group members working

separately without group interaction. The individual test is composed of multiple-

choice and true-false questions covering exactly the same material as the group

test with a proportionate number of questions from each chapter of the text.

Failure to score 80% or above (minimum standard of achievement) on the

individual test will result in the reduction of that individual group member’s test

score as follows:

D. Any group member not present for the cooperative exam or arriving more than 5

E. If final individual test scores are thought to be excessively high, three alterations

can be made.

1. Make the test questions more difficult.

F. Grading the exams

2. Individual exam: deduct one point for every mistake on the multiple-choice questions

and two points for a wrong answer on the true-false questions. Exam grade is

computed as a standard percentage (number of points earned divided by maximum

points possible, such as 40 points earned divided by 50 maximum points = 80%).

F. What happens if an individual scores higher than the group?

1. The group score is recorded by that individual’s name, but the individual

score

H. Why allow more than one answer to be correct on multiple-choice questions?

1. Departing from the standard single-response to a multiple-choice-question

requires precise knowledge from students. Guessing is minimized. In the

standard format, a student doesn’t need to read all the answers once the

correct answer is ascertained. If they know “a” is correct, why read any

2. Most importantly, students receive credit for everything they do know. In the

Simply put, the multiple-response version of multiple-choice questions is more