New testing format creates buzz at Aragon
The first semester of remote learning came to a close in late May and many are still pondering over what is to come next school year. From finals either heavily adapted or completely canceled, to second semester curriculums being turned upside down, the Aragon community is currently attempting to plan out a new process for the 2020-2021 academic year.
The biggest question on the minds of parents, students and teachers is how testing is going to continue if remote learning continues. The transition to remote learning and the credit/no credit system this year has prompted the majority of teachers to dramatically reduce the amount of testing required for their class. However, teachers have decided that the reduction in testing this semester will not be accepted for next year and the school board has agreed.
“We’ve talked to the board and have decided that more frequent testing will be required for next year,” said English teacher James Daniel. “To make up for the lack of exams this year, students will be tested every half hour and these quizzes will be going on throughout all 24 hours of the day. Canvas quizzes are no longer sufficient and instead, they will be replaced with quizzes created on the platform BuzzFeed.”
These new quizzes will account for 85% of students’ final grades and the other 15% of their grades will be from homework.
“Especially in math, we’re going to use the answer by answer quiz format,” said math teacher Alice Hu. “The questions will get progressively harder and will show us exactly when a student’s level of understanding stops. Unfortunately, this does mean that if a student gets the first answer wrong, even if they could have possibly gotten the rest of the questions right, they will fail the test and most likely the semester. But I think this new format will just push students to work harder at understanding the basics.”
Teachers believe that the pressure these new quiz formats will bring to students will make up for the relaxed semester that they’ve gone through. It will jump start students back into the reality of the stress that school exams should bring. With more tests and higher stakes for each question, it is expected that students will be more studious and will push themselves to achieve more in terms of academics.
“I’m nervous about next year’s testing format but I also think it could be a good thing,” said junior Suzzy Williams. “I think that since each question matters much more now, my motivation for studying will increase immensely. Now that I can’t get a single question wrong, I’ll put more work into deepening my understanding of each subject so that I can handle any question that’s thrown at me.”
In order to administer these BuzzFeed quizzes, teachers will all need to make individual BuzzFeed accounts. Students will first have to take a pan of their testing area for review. Then they will have to record their screens and themselves so that teachers can see them work out each problem as they submit their answers. Once the test begins, the students’ device will block them from going on any other website and all other devices in the household will stop working until the test ends.
BuzzFeed quizzes are also thought to provide a more exciting test environment as teachers can add pictures to their quizzes.
“I’m excited to share the math memes that I’ve found during quarantine with my students through the BuzzFeed quizzes,” Hu said. “Hopefully they’ll add a fun factor to the exams. Also, I plan to ask my students to send in memes they want to see on the tests. If I use the meme they send in, there will be a possible chance for extra credit. And trust me, they’ll need the extra credit.”
Students will also be able to get the extra credit they will definitely need through doing additional BuzzFeed quizzes outside of their subject testing. These quizzes will include: “Which Outer Banks Character is Your Soulmate,” “What Color Matches Your Aura,” and “Your Choice of Places to Travel Will Determine Which Reality Show You’ll Star in.” Based on the results of these extra quizzes, students can be held back a year and/or expelled don’t believe they were being honest with their choices.
Other platforms for exams were considered such as Google forms and Canvas. However, it’s been found that these platforms are easier to hack.
“My sons have shown me multiple TikToks where students show how to hack Google form and Canvas quizzes to see all the right answers,” Daniel said. “But since we haven’t seen any about hacking BuzzFeed quizzes yet, we figured it would be the safest quiz platform. Also, kids these days just seem to enjoy taking BuzzFeed quizzes more. It’s a commonly used and well liked platform that we believe will have a lot of success in an academic setting.”
Although this new process idea came from the desperation remote learning has caused, if this quiz platform is successful, it will continue even when remote learning ends. Student feedback will also be collected through BuzzFeed quizzes because there are indeed right and wrong opinions.
