ALUMNUS SURVEYS PRESENT QUIZ SYSTEM AND FINDS IT WANTING IN EFFICIENCY

The following article, entitled "The Quiz in Large Courses," was written by G. S. Rich '26, and is reprinted from the current number of the Alumni Bulletin

September, and another 1000 Freshmen, most of them expecting eventually to be "welcomed to the fellowship of educated men." Freshmen are a perpetual and perennial problem, yet they have not reached the point of considering themselves as problems, so others must needs do it for them. Life is too full of a number of things, including courses. To stay in Harvard they must be passed-somehow. Ways and means are various, good ways and bad. A few may hit on the good ways by virtue of instruction in the matter or because they are essentially students by nature.

It is obvious to everyone that education is a process of accumulation, not alone of knowledge in the narrow sense, but of experiences. It is a natural process which will take place automatically as long as inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness exist. If the education is obtained in schools, it is directed, orderly accumulation-the facilitation of which is the reason for schools. In schools the problem arises how to get the subject matter of such courses as "History I" into the mental accumulation of the student when his natural inquisitiveness lies not in that direction. Yet such courses must be passed before one is permitted to join the fellowship of educated men. And the course is passed to the examinations are passed.

Examination Functions Two-Fold

There seem to be two functions of the present mush maligned examination system. First, to disclose the extend of the student's knowledge. Second, to make him study. In the graduate schools, where the students are more mature and experienced, the first purpose is sufficiently accomplished by one examination at the end of each course. There is no need for the second use one studies or flunks. One examination would be sufficient to disclose the knowledge of a college course too, but the stimulus of frequent examinations is felt by all perhaps erroneously to be necessary in order not to place too much responsibility for doing his work on the under classman. It is probably, in the main, sound sense because the underclassman usually over estimates his own ability to absorb information in a lump at the eleventh hour.

Granting the necessity of giving frequent examinations, why should not a type of examinations, why should not a type of examinations be given that will be of some benefit to the students instead of being an unmitigated aggravation?

Weekly Quiz Often Pernicious

The weekly or fortnightly quiz, given for the purpose of keeping the student on the job, as it actually works in most cases, fosters pernicious methods of study. The students do what is expressed by a very familiar phrase, "cram up for the quiz and forget it." They read up the chapters assigned the night before the quiz. There is no time for taking notes. They go to the section meeting remembering words, phrases, and paragraphs-mere print-and spit out all those which seem to have any application to the questions, with a sensation of relief at being rid of them. And, of course, they forget that mite because they accumulated only words and phrases which were not organized into any definite ideas on the subject. When the final examination comes there are no notes to study, the sources are immensely too bulky, and resort is had to purchased notes which convey at best a sketchy idea of the material.

By the end of the senior year some have learned how to study. They will have discovered that the only way to master, a subject is to have complete notes on it and continuously go back and review those notes, connecting the present work with what has gone before. if, in the Freshman year, courses had been so conducted as to force the student to adopt that very system, would it not be of great benefit to him? And, thereby learning more about the course than he would otherwise, he would probably have more interest in it.

History 1 An Example

Examples shorten explanation, I pick on a survey course known to us as "History 1." It is typical of many courses taken by Freshmen and Sophomores, covers an enormous amount of material, and to one to which my suggestion particularly applies.

Two lectures a week and a section meeting in which a short quiz on assigned reading is given. Looking at Freshmen as they are and not as they ought to be it is quickly seen that the reading is done by more than the minority "who ought to be flunked anyway" for the sole purpose of passing that quiz; taken like a doze of salt instead of as food. Notes, if any are unsystematic, unimportant, and useless for review. They are probably not looked at again until the final exam Final grade "D"-disappointment because he "really worked damn had for that exam," is it not much better to study the material in the course so that it is understood and assimilated? If the Freshman can be made to do that he has learned something-about the course, to be sure-but, what is more important in the future, about how to study, how to master a subject in spite of a lack of interest.

Cumulative Quiz Suggested

My suggestion is the device, the guiding rein, leading him to do his work in the way he should, the way a conscientious student would do it if he knew the way, showing him the way if he does not know it. Call it the cumulative quiz. Applied to the example it works this way; the course goes on without change except in the matter of the section meeting quiz. The quiz, now a cumulative quiz, will have two parts. Part I, questions concerning the reading assigned for the immediate work; part II, questions on any work previously covered by the course.

The matter of preparing the quiz is of the utmost importance. The questions on the week's reading must not be given, as it is suspected they have been, merely to disclose whether the student did the reading. Such questions as "Which wife did Henry VIII call a 'Flemish mare'?" are out. Questions must be only on important points. That will emphasize them. The class discussion can then amplify them. The result should be to fix them in the student's memory. It is for the instructor to decide what is important and put it across. The questions on back work must be, to an even greater degree, confined to matters of importance. If they are not, the diligent student will be discouraged and confused by finding he is held up for information which he could not, in the exercise of a reasonable, judgement, have deemed important.

The effect on the student, if he is to succeed at all, will be to force him to do his work regularly, to keep complete and intelligible notes which he will be forced to read and re-read continually. He will find what the best students know any way, that he must annotate and under line his notes and perhaps summarize them in order better to organize the material so that he can keep it well in hand. The experienced student knows these things. But a Freshman or Sophomore is not an experienced student.