The Secrets of Academic Success: Secret #2: How Profs Write Exams

Secret #2: Bloom’s Taxonomy (or How Do Profs Write Exams, Anyway?)

Consciously or unconsciously, your professors are guided by a teaching philosophy when writing exams. A philosophy is a belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation. There are reasons they (your teachers) do what they do. Believe it or not.

Professors learn these reasons explicitly as part of their graduate training and implicitly through experience.

How do profs write exams? Imagine if you knew that. What power you’d have. You could anticipate types of questions on an exam and you could bend a spoon just with the power of your mind. Well, maybe you wouldn't be able to do that bend-a-spoon thing.

I learned this secret explicitly as part of my graduate teacher training and I guess I use it consciously. At least that is what my syllabus says (see the teaching philosophy section of my syllabus).


I’d recommend you read:
How to Write Better Tests: A Handbook for Improving Test Construction Skills
You may also want to check out Bloom's Taxonomy.

Now you know how an exam is written. You did visit and read that sites above, right?  If so, you now have a better understanding of how a prof. writes exams. But, what about the content of the questions? You now know the how, but where’s the what?


Share this post with others. See the Twitter, Facebook and other buttons below.
Please follow, add, friend or subscribe to help support this blog.
See more about me at my web site WilliamHartPhD.com.

The Secrets of Academic Success: A Student Guide - Secret #1

There are some things about academic success that you may not know.
But your professors know.
The University support staff knows.
However, you as a student may not know. So, what are the secrets?


In a recent book titled The Secret, the author promises to reveal to you the “The Secret to everything - the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, [and] youth.”


Well, I can’t promise all that. But, I do think I have some information (some “secrets”) that just might help you with academic success. What I share with you below applies not only to my courses, but to all your courses. What you’ll learn here will certainly help you in my classes and, more than likely, it will help you in your other classes as well.

What follows are some secrets that I learned as an undergraduate student, as a graduate student and as a professor. I’d like to share these with you.



Secret #1 (Well, kinda a secret)

There is nothing more fundamental than the fundamentals.

Former MIT prof and Chesapeake, VA resident, Randy Pausch wrote a little book that I'd highly recommend. Pausch’s book is called The Last Lecture. You may want to see the YouTube video of Pausch’s Last Lecture. If you can't watch the full lecture below, please at least see the first 10 minutes or so.  Note that this video has been viewed over 16 million times.




You may also want to check out a short clip of Dr. Pausch over on ABC.com.


This prof. makes many important points in the video and his book, but one of the most important is about the role of fundamentals in education. Pausch learned this lesson early in life from a grade school football coach. “Fundamentals. That was a great gift Coach Graham gave us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I’ve seen this as one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment: You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.”

Here we are not playing football, but the same idea applies. Here we are not learning the basics of blocking, but the basics of studying, the basics of learning.

There are few good study skills sources that I’d recommend sources that are online. I especially like “Influencing teachers.” I’d also recommend the following study fundamentals pages from the Study Guides and Strategies site:

• Motivating yourself
• Developing self-discipline
• Taking notes in lectures
• Create, & study with, flashcards
• Taking notes from a text book
• Studying text books in science

So, after reading the above, you may say “those are not secrets, I knew that already.”  I’d argue that there is a difference between knowledge and practice. You may “know” them, but are you practicing them? If you know these and consistently practice these, then you have the fundamentals down. If you don’t, then please don’t skip past these. Take them seriously. Practice these fundamentals, “otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.” Practice them. “Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.”

Share this post with others. See the Twitter, Facebook and other buttons below.
Please follow, add, friend or subscribe to help support this blog.
See more about me at my web site WilliamHartPhD.com.

MyFavMusic: Spotify: "Hello Bonjour" by Michael Franti, Spearhead

Spotify: "Hello Bonjour" by Michael Franti, Spearhead: Newly saved on Spotify “Hello Bonjour” by Michael Franti, Spearhead http://spoti.fi/1P6YCCb

My musical interests on Tumblr