I remember he said something like ‘this should be completely obvious to you’, and to me that was crushing… we had a conversation after the mid-term e… - David Franklin

Exams also give us a concrete example of Dan’s attempts to promote understanding over memorization. He encourages students to bring with them a ‘cheat sheet’, which can include anything they want. He does not want students being tested on whether they can remember the formula for the standard error of a distribution, and does not believe that it will be helpful for them to do so. Allowing cheat sheets means that students can bring more than just formulas with them: if they were struggling with a topic, they could bring all sorts of pre-cooked explanations to help them with the exam questions. In turn, this acts as an extra incentive to Dan to set questions that rely on a deeper understanding.

Dan asks the class whether any of them has ever checked the weather on their phone to see if it’s likely to rain while they’re outside. Everyone has. “What do you do if you see there’s a 30% chance of rain?” “Take an umbrella”, several students all say at once.

Recognising competing purposes Although few would have much trouble identifying ‘maximising learning’ as the purpose of the class, there may be several competing purposes in play, all of which are invisible. For students, maximising enjoyment, minimising effort, maximising test scores, maximising learning about something else, and making friends are all likely to be found across the classroom. For the teacher, we can add to that list maximising evaluation scores, which may be closer linked to student satisfaction than to student learning.