READERS’ FORUM

Glenn Davies
Temple University, Japan Campus

https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTTLT47.3-1

Testing is an essential part of any educational
program. When used before, during, or at theend of a course, tests “measure individual competence of students in their thinking skills and subject-matter knowledge and expertise” (Webb, 1995,p. 240). Despite the multitude of possible individualand institutional differences in the goals of testing,its basic purpose remains the same: the measurement of relevant knowledge and skills. However, it
is important that the tests in use sample their entire
domain. Applying this principle to the testing of L2
learning, our assessments must be connected to thecommunication skills currently being taught in ourclasses.
Research on teaching tasks and techniques shows
not only that group work in the classroom has
become commonplace, but that facilitating learningand working as part of a team is also now essential(Cheng & Warren, 2000). One common pedagogicalapproach to group work is the use of collaborative
learning activities. Collaborative learning (CL) has

Literature Review
The use of collaborative learning and testing tasks
has shown benefits in numerous subject areas, ranging from chemistry, biology, and math, to atmospheric and computer sciences, forestry, and foodsystems (Clarkston & Gilley, 2014). For instance,
Heller and Hollabaugh (1992) utilized cooperative
grouping in physics classes to teach and test problem-solving abilities. They found the use of group
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現在の第二言語学習の授業では、協働学習が一般的になっているが、その際には、個々の学生の知識や技能を問うような、従来の評価方法が用いられることが多い。しかし、この評価方法では、学習者の能力を完全には把握できず、教師が実際に教える際に重視する本質的なコミュ
ニケーション能力を測れないため、評価方法としては不十分なものである。本論では、L2クラスでの協働テスト実施について考察している。また、この評価方法を、これまでの方法に替わるものとしてさらに活用するべきであり、現在の授業評価をさらに補完するために導入するべきだと提案している。

JALT PRAXIS

Although collaborative learning activities are now common
in contemporary second-language classrooms, they are often accompanied by traditional assessment methods, suchas eliciting knowledge and skills from students individually.
These assessment methods, however, are inadequate as they
provide an incomplete picture of learner abilities and ignore
some of the essential communication skills that teachers actually focus on in their teaching. This article looks at the L2 classroom use of collaborative testing. It argues for greater use ofthis alternative testing method and suggests ways in which it
could be introduced to complement current approaches toclassroom assessment.

been defined as “group learning activity organized
so that learning is dependent on the socially structured exchange of information between learners”(Candlin et al., 2003, p. 339). Perhaps directly bornfrom Vygotsky’s ideas of learner development andcooperative learning (Cole et al., 1978), collaborative tasks enable students with different abilities towork together toward group goals or to engage inactivities where individual success influences groupsuccess and learning occurs through interaction in asocial context (Hassanien, 2006).
Once collaborative learning tasks are in place, thenext logical step would be to implement collaborative testing to measure their associated outcomes.
Also referred to as group testing, double testing,paired testing, cooperative testing, and dyad testing(Akioyamen et al., 2017), collaborative testing isa student-centered, active learning approach toassessment, in which students are tested in groups.
The skills targeted by this approach (and those thatlater should be tested) include noticing, self-correction, rephrasing, increased exposure to the language
being practiced, improved vocabulary growth,
improved written or spoken output based on shared
input, and an overall increase in student confidencewith what is being learned. If we accept that testingin general should seek to measure acquisition ofknowledge with some meaningful, real-world application beyond the classroom, individual student
answering of multiple-choice questions alone seems
unlikely to achieve this objective. By contrast, a shift
in focus to L2 communicative production reveals
the potential of group work, or collaborative tasks,
as an authentic means of assessing learners’ capacity
for later language use (Davies, 2009).

ARTICLES

Using Collaborative Testing to Better
Evaluate L2 Classroom Learning

The Language Teacher • Readers’ Forumtasks to be an effective means of solving problems,with 72% of the participants reporting that group
discussions helped them understand the course
material. Moreover, research by Heiner and Rieger(2014) concluded that collaborative exams were
not only easy to set up, but that they also resulted
in deeper learner engagement and promoted more
effective support for and evaluation of learning.
Research on collaborative testing methods
evidences how they can positively impact various
aspects of learning. For instance, students havebeen shown to demonstrate significantly greater
improvement on subsequent individual testing after
having been tested in groups as opposed to having
been initially tested only as individuals (Clarkston &Gilley, 2014). Moreover, in an investigation of problem-based learning (PBL) in which students collaboratively activated their knowledge to completegroup tasks, Mennin (2007) concluded that “students [found] PBL to be challenging, satisfying, andmotivating” (p. 305). Thus, having learners engage
and perform in these types of activities elicits not
only their knowledge, but also their actual communication skills.

Possible Approaches
One approach to collaborative testing is the useof two-stage exams in which students first complete
and submit an exam individually and then workin small groups to answer the same exam questions again. During the group work stage, students
receive immediate, targeted feedback on their solutions from their classmates while becoming awareof other ways of looking at the problems (Clarkston& Gilley, 2014). This approach is perhaps the mostlogical and balanced as it allows the teacher to geta sense of a student’s abilities both as an individualand as a social actor. Although developing two-stage
exams creates an additional burden for teachers andinstitutions, the fuller picture of learner abilities
that this type of exam potentially provides is arguably worth the extra effort. Moreover, the initial setup and administration time may not be so different
from most current practices, the main additional
consideration perhaps being how to reliably elicit
representative participation from each member
during the group stage.
A second, and quite common, approach to collaborative testing is the use of pair-to-group-to-classactivities, in which exam topics or questions are
first shared and discussed in pairs, then in ever-increasingly numerous groups, from 4 to 6 to 8 andso on, until the entire class is involved in the same
discussion. This type of activity allows students
4to confirm or correct their understanding of thecontent on which they have just been tested. Thisapproach can positively influence the motivationlevel of each group member through success withthe activity as well as ensure that everyone haslearned the material and is motivated to teach theothers (Slavin, 1996).
A third alternative to traditional individual testingis the use of self, peer, and collaborative assessment
tasks (Falchikov, 1986). These tasks allow for threestages of assessment, namely self-evaluation, thenpeer discussion, and finally small group discussionof the correct and incorrect answers to questions
on tests taken individually. The idea here is to focus
on learners’ ability to explain their positions or
thought processes on answers given during individual testing. This approach is particularly useful inthe analysis of incorrect multiple-choice answers.
It also enables the teacher to better understand
student reasoning for choosing specific answers andmay even justify the awarding of partial test credit.
Most importantly, this three-stage testing approachprovides a clearer picture of learners’ overall abilities, the weighting of each depenfing on the priorities of each individual practitioner or institution.
However, Davies (2009) suggests useful scoring
techniques for each stage, ranging from evaluation
packs including self-evaluation components andnumerical scores to one-off peer evaluations withrankings of team members.
As a final suggested collaborative approach toclassroom assessment, debate activities based on
topics from exam readings or semester-specifictasks can be used to elicit a wide range of communication skills. Although not a new idea, the additionof these types of activities to the established assessment regimen provides a look at actual linguistic
performance, as opposed to the mere knowledge
that is typically measured by simple quizzes ormultiple-choice tests. As with the previously
suggested collaborative tasks, the benefits of thesetypes of activities include “a potentially less stressfulenvironment for new, international or less social
students to interact with their peers, and a better
quality of work that can be produced” (Davidson etal., 2014, p. 117). Furthermore, as Slavin (1996) notes,“students will learn from one another because …
cognitive conflicts will arise, inadequate reasoning
will be exposed, disequilibration will occur, andhigher quality understandings will emerge” (p. 49).
In short, even though the target of these types ofassessment activities remains that of collectively
testing current learner abilities, this approach entails the additional advantage of the social learningthat takes place in the process.

THE LANGUAGE TEACHER Online • https://jalt-publications.org/tlt

Davies: Using Collaborative Testing to Better Evaluate L2 Classroom Learning

ConclusionJALT2023 – Growth
Mindset in Language
Education
Tsukuba, IBARAKI
November 24~27, 2023
https://jalt.org/
conference/
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Glenn Davies has beenteaching and working in theESL field in Japan since 1997.
He received his Master’s degree in Science in Education(MS.Ed) from Temple University Japan Campus, where
he also currently teaches in
the Continuing Education
program. His specialist interests are language testing
methodology and collaborative learning. He can be contacted at <davies@tuj.
temple.edu>

JALT PRAXISReferences
Akioyamen, L. E., Cantwell, E. R., Jadotte, Y. T., Pierce,J., & Sousou, J. (2017). Collaborative testing for
improving student learning outcomes and test-taking
performance in higher education: A systematic review.
Campbell Systematic Reviews, 13(1), 1–18. https://doi.
org/10.1002/CL2.186
Candlin, C. N., Rose, K. R., & Sachs, G. T. (2003).
Developing cooperative learning in the EFL/ESL
secondary classroom. RELC Journal, 34(3), 338–369.
https://doi.org/10.1177/003368820303400305
Cheng, W., & Warren, M. (2000). Making a difference:
Using peers to assess individual students’ contributions
to a group project. Teaching in Higher Education, 5(2),243–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/135625100114885
Clarkston, B., & Gilley, B. H. (2014). Collaborative
testing: Evidence of learning in a controlled in-classstudy of undergraduate students. Journal of CollegeScience Teaching, 43(3), 83–91. https://www.sei.ubc.ca/bitstream/seima/2072/1/Gilley-Clarkston_2-Stage_
Exam_Learning_JCST2014.pdf
Cole, M., John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S., & Souberman,E. (Eds.) (1978). Mind in society: The development ofhigher psychological processes. L. S. Vygotsky. Harvard
University Press.
Davidson, P. M., Deek, H., Disler, R., Hickman, L. D.,
Jackson, D., Potgieter, I., & Power, T. (2014). Smallgroup learning: Graduate health students’ views ofchallenges and benefits. Contemporary Nurse, 48(1),117–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/10376178.2014.11081
933
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org/10.1007/s10734-009-9216-y

ARTICLES

As it is generally agreed that students learn wellwhen they work together, collaborative learning
is now a staple of many classrooms. Collaborative learning enables students to work together
to achieve group goals and promotes individual
success through interaction. However, traditional
testing methods are often mismatched with theselearning outcomes. As an alternative approach toassessment, collaborative testing more realisticallymirrors not only what learners do in the classroom
but also what they will be expected to do in theworld beyond. Although care is necessary to ensure
reliable measurement of individual learner abilities
in group settings, by expanding our testing repertoire to include collaborative activities, we can hopeto ensure that we are assessing our learners’ abilities
in a way that more accurately represents what it isthat they are truly learning.

Falchikov, N. (1986). Product comparisons andprocess benefits of collaborative peer group andself-assessments. Assessment and Evaluation inHigher Education, 11(2), 146–166. https://doi.
org/10.1080/0260293860110206
Hassanien, A. (2006). Student experience of group workand group assessment in higher education. Journal of
Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 6(1), 17–9. https://doi.
org/10.1300/J172v06n01_02
Heiner, C. E., & Rieger, G. W. (2014). Examinations
that support collaborative learning: The students’perspective. Journal of College Science Teaching, 43(4),41–47. https://sei.ubc.ca/bitstream/seima/2222/1/
Rieger-Heiner_2-stage-Exams_JCST2014.pdf
Heller, P., & Hollabaugh, M. (1992). Teaching problem
solving through cooperative grouping. Part 2:Designing problems and structuring groups. American
Journal of Physics, 60(7), 637–644. https://doi.
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Mennin, S. (2007). Small-group problem-based learning
as a complex adaptive system. Teaching and Teacher
Education, 23(3), 303–313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
tate.2006.12.016
Slavin, R. E. (1996). Research on cooperative learning andachievement: What we know, what we need to know.
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21(1), 43–69.
https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1996.0004
Webb, N. M. (1995). Group collaboration in assessment:
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Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 17(2),239–261. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737017002239