Unknown examination dates

However, like Con himself noted, his round was building his own case, not refuting mine. Now, while there are points where the cases cross and his building a case is fine, I remind readers that Con hasn't actually refuted anything of mine yet. Henceforth, my R1 points still stand. I'll proceed to tackle Con's case by his own argument numbers. Then we'll address other issues. Con's Arguments1. Con appears to be a little off topic here. Con in particular states "Failing to know what an assessment will cover and failing to know the time frame expectation for learning are not conducive to effective teaching or learning. "Note though that students can know what an exam covers regardless of whether or not examination dates are known, making this a moot point. Students are still told what will be in their exams, merely indirectly. Ie. They know taught content is examinable, they know what's in their syllabus etc. Con seems to agree with me by stating "the point of a test is to test what one knows, and the point of the teacher is to teach the relevant material" . Although elaborated on later by Con, here no link is demonstrated between knowing the time frame and 'conducive to effective teaching' - a non sequiter.2. Con misconstrues my case slightly here when he states that I think understanding is absent given exam dates. I merely believe that known dates increase the absence of understanding, not that understanding is not present. Also, Con states that any test that could be entirely memorised should be void of any meaning. I agree personally, but the issue is that these tests do have meaning, as set by other parties, be it employers, the government or the school itself. Henceforth, memorisation does have a form of meaning. Con's final point here is that a good test will 'measure your understanding . .. not your memorisation' . Unfortunately, tests are not always well designed. Furthermore, even if we assume the test is designed to assess understanding (which I stated was best practice in R1) , I demonstrated in R1 that memorisation can be used to falsely display understanding, at least for a short time. This short term knowledge is then later forgotten.3. Con concludes this point with "That is why students who study more frequently for shorter periods of time, as opposed to cramming, will actually have a more firm grasp and recollection of their work. " We agree that cramming is bad. Now, which system more effectively eliminates cramming? Clearly, one can't cram for an exam one doesn't know the date of, so unknown examination dates eliminate the issue of cramming and it's problematic consequences. Con is actually discussing the 'spacing effect' found in psychology - . http://en.wikipedia.org.... This effect details how humans more easily learn / remember things when studied a few times over a longer period of time (spaced presentation) as opposed to repeated study in a shorter timespan (massed presentation). However, and this is key - "the benefit of spaced presentations does not appear at short retention intervals; that is, at short retention intervals, massed presentation lead to better memory performance than spaced presentations" . SeeGreene, R. L. (1989). Spacing effects in memory: Evidence for a two-process account. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 15(3), 371-377 . The main issue is which system better discourages massed presentations. Massed presentations are bad for long term learning (we want students to remember for the long term, not the short term) , but we know that they are more effective in the short term, and hence potentially more effective for remembering test content. Clearly, massed presentation is impossible if an exam date is unknown (see footnote 1) .4. Con acknowledges that test anxiety exists under any system. The question is whether knowledge of exam dates increases such anxiety. It must be noted though that there are no known cases of unknown examination dates, and so we don’t have empirical evidence to refer to on this point, meaning our discussion will be theory based and perhaps incomplete. The main argument for why unknown examination dates lower test anxiety is that, quite simply, the time students are subject to anxiety is minimal. To put this simply, you can’t dread what you aren’t aware is coming soon. One of the biggest problems with anxiety is how people fuel their own doubts. By continually questioning themselves on their preparation and so forth, they sow the seeds of anxiety themselves. By not allowing one to sow the seeds one uproots the problem. To quote Con’s own source (see pg. 271 for the quote) on this issue “there is evidence that high emotionality is associated with declining performance only [emphasis mine] when the individual is experiencing high levels of worry (Morris et al. , 1981; Schwarzer 1984)” . Quite clearly, if one knocks out the source of the worry (dread mainly) then declining performance due to high emotionality is no longer an issue. ConclusionAs Con stated himself, my R1 points weren’t contended and still stand. These alone provide strong grounds to affirm the resolution. I countered Con’s first point by showing that exam content is still known (to the degree which it is told) under both systems. I showed how Con’s second contention was misdirected and flawed and that Con was falsely interpreting my position. I showed in my reply to contention 3 that massed presentations were less effective, and so by preventing massed presentations (through unknown examination dates) the better option of spaced presentation was encouraged. Finally, I showed how unknown examination dates actually lower, not increase, test anxiety. I look forward to Con’s reply.1 - Even if, by some feat of endurance, students tried to continually do mass presentations for revision out of paranoia, it should be realised that this would actually constitute spaced presentations as presentations are occurring at spaced intervals if we merely eliminate the repeated presentations (ie. Massed presentations; see the deficient processing view – (Hintzman et al. , 1973)) on each day or week as they are shown to be less effective (check the wikipedia source for an explanation) .