Interview as Exam: Part 2 - Beginnings
This is the second post in a series on the Interview as Exam. The first outlines why we did it: the causes and consequences for me and my students of doing this kind of assessment. This post explains the first iteration of the interview we used in our history department. The third post explains how and why we simplified the interview, and supported the learning all the way through the course. Part 4 is about assessing the interview.
We as a teacher team created a set of 20 documents, mostly primary sources, that we gave to students near the end of the course (CHC2D - Canadian History 1914-present). We made sure that they were documents that students had either seen before, or they had enough contextual knowledge to decode and explain them. We agreed that we could swap out some of the documents, depending on our own teaching that semester.
We asked students to prepare to discuss all six historical thinking concepts for two documents of their choice, using the historical thinking concepts templates then available from the Historical Thinking Project. They made an appointment with their teacher for 10 minutes during the exam period, or during the last few days of classes, or at lunch or after school if needed. They needed to arrive early to their interview to pull an additional primary source from the document set to discuss at the interview and explain it, its significance and its relevance to Canadian identity.
The student instructions were lengthy, and it was difficult to explain the main purpose to students. We realized right away that students were spending too much time explaining WHAT happened (we initially had them describe the 5-Ws of their chosen events) and not enough time explaining their thinking about the past. We removed the 5-Ws section - we as teachers already know what happened, and we realized that their knowledge would emerge (or not!) as they explained their thinking.
I realized right away that a full day of 10 minute interviews was exhausting! I couldn't listen for a full day (even with a lunch break!) and it wasn't fair to the students who were later in the day. So I switched to seeing most of the class in the morning of the exam, and then the rest of the students in the last couple of days before the exam period, and a couple at lunch or after school, and a couple more in the afternoons of other exam days, if necessary.
I also realized right away that plagiarism was pretty impossible. One student pulled a prohibition cartoon at the interview and it became immediately clear that he had no idea what it was about. I asked him: "Do you know what a bootlegger is?" and he said, sadly, "No, miss." Once I explained the term that he had missed, he then had an opportunity to explain his thinking to me. This opportunity definitely would have been missed in a traditional exam.
This experience was also really important feedback for my teaching, and it wasn't just this one student, but lots of them had misconceptions about all kinds of things - some trivial and some more important. Even though I had spent lots of time teaching something, it wasn't translating to the students actually learning it! Of course this has always been clear on traditional exams - but rather than sitting alone and sighing despondently for hours on end, I now had one last opportunity to actually help my students learn something, hopefully of value to their lives as Canadian citizens.
We also changed the set to focus on 1950-present, because we realized we had already done lots of assessment on the earlier parts of the century, and wanted to hear students' thoughts on the second half, that we hadn't had so much time to cover. We were also a little bored of hearing about the same events over and over. The other final evaluation, a primary source based, point form "essay" did assess some of the earlier events, but we also realized that the historical thinking, the analysis and the inquiry process were the more important skills and processes that students would need.
Some students were really stressed out by the interview, while others, were perhaps not stressed enough. I recognized that it wasn't fair to give students a new format for the final, so I put in a few opportunities into the rest of the course to practice doing interviews. That way, everyone would be more clear on exactly what was expected.
In part 3, I explain more about how we changed the final interview and the course itself to better reflect and support the students' learning, to be more engaging and more joyful for all of us.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
We as a teacher team created a set of 20 documents, mostly primary sources, that we gave to students near the end of the course (CHC2D - Canadian History 1914-present). We made sure that they were documents that students had either seen before, or they had enough contextual knowledge to decode and explain them. We agreed that we could swap out some of the documents, depending on our own teaching that semester.
We asked students to prepare to discuss all six historical thinking concepts for two documents of their choice, using the historical thinking concepts templates then available from the Historical Thinking Project. They made an appointment with their teacher for 10 minutes during the exam period, or during the last few days of classes, or at lunch or after school if needed. They needed to arrive early to their interview to pull an additional primary source from the document set to discuss at the interview and explain it, its significance and its relevance to Canadian identity.
The student instructions were lengthy, and it was difficult to explain the main purpose to students. We realized right away that students were spending too much time explaining WHAT happened (we initially had them describe the 5-Ws of their chosen events) and not enough time explaining their thinking about the past. We removed the 5-Ws section - we as teachers already know what happened, and we realized that their knowledge would emerge (or not!) as they explained their thinking.
I realized right away that a full day of 10 minute interviews was exhausting! I couldn't listen for a full day (even with a lunch break!) and it wasn't fair to the students who were later in the day. So I switched to seeing most of the class in the morning of the exam, and then the rest of the students in the last couple of days before the exam period, and a couple at lunch or after school, and a couple more in the afternoons of other exam days, if necessary.
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| The Problematic Prohibition Cartoon - Begbie Contest Society |
This experience was also really important feedback for my teaching, and it wasn't just this one student, but lots of them had misconceptions about all kinds of things - some trivial and some more important. Even though I had spent lots of time teaching something, it wasn't translating to the students actually learning it! Of course this has always been clear on traditional exams - but rather than sitting alone and sighing despondently for hours on end, I now had one last opportunity to actually help my students learn something, hopefully of value to their lives as Canadian citizens.
We also changed the set to focus on 1950-present, because we realized we had already done lots of assessment on the earlier parts of the century, and wanted to hear students' thoughts on the second half, that we hadn't had so much time to cover. We were also a little bored of hearing about the same events over and over. The other final evaluation, a primary source based, point form "essay" did assess some of the earlier events, but we also realized that the historical thinking, the analysis and the inquiry process were the more important skills and processes that students would need.
Some students were really stressed out by the interview, while others, were perhaps not stressed enough. I recognized that it wasn't fair to give students a new format for the final, so I put in a few opportunities into the rest of the course to practice doing interviews. That way, everyone would be more clear on exactly what was expected.
In part 3, I explain more about how we changed the final interview and the course itself to better reflect and support the students' learning, to be more engaging and more joyful for all of us.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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