Test Day

I look around my dusty lab at a sea of lost, confused and sometimes fearful faces. It’s test day. Every Friday afternoon two hours is set aside for tests and the schedule of tests is prepared and distributed at the beginning of the semester. This is my first test of the semester and the first time I’ve attempted a practical test – that is actually using computers.

This afternoon I’m with my youngest class, 6eme, who don’t quite get computers, but are sure excited to mess around on them anyway. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part I’m forced to repeat myself a lot, and use very simple language. For example, in my older classes what once was a long drawn out, five minute process of me explaining every step to them has now become three words, “Arrêtez votre ordinateur” (Shut down your computer). In contrast, most of 6eme hasn’t quite got the double click down perfectly yet and ‘shut down your computer’ remains a five minute explanation.

Going into this test I knew that I would have to make the test pretty easy, and I thought I had done a pretty good job. The test was broken into ten steps which were divided into four groups. After you had finished all the steps in a group you were to raise you hand and I would come around and check to make sure you did it correctly. Then you could move on to the next group of tasks. For each step you did correctly you got a point, giving a possible of ten points. Here is the English version of the test.

1. Open the Recycle Bin (1)
Minimize the Recycle Bin (2)
Raise you hand.

2. Close the Recycle Bin (3)
Open the calculator (4)
With the calculator calculate 79-49 (5)
Raise your hand

3. Close the calculator (6)
Open Encarta Junior (7)
With Encarta Junior find the number of countries in Africa (8)
Raise your hand

4 Close Encarta Junior (9)
Open Paint and draw a dog (10)
Raise your hand

I thought it would be a cake walk to get a passing grade (50%) as we had done each of these things in class, many of them several times. As I walked around the room, I saw that my students begged to differ.

Almost every screen I looked at the students were doing one of two things. About half the class had found the recycle bin on the desktop, but instead of double clicking on it or using one of the other ways of opening it we discussed and practiced in class, most were clicking and dragging it across the desktop. This was remarkable in that the concept of clicking and dragging had been the concept that had given everyone the most difficulty, and now they were pros. Many right clicked on the Recycle Bin, bring up the menu which included such helpful options as open. No one actually clicked on open, but several raised their hands to show me that they had opened the Recycle Bin. Several clicked on “Create a shortcut” which led to much confusion. Now there are two Recycle Bins!

The other half of the class had opened the Start Menu and was bewilderingly looking around at the submenus opening and closing as they moved their mouse around. I asked several of them where the Recycle Bin was, and they hesitantly moved their mouse over to rest on it. When I asked them how to open it, the mouse eventually moved back to the Start Menu and resumed their browsing.

At the end of the allotted fifteen minutes I looked down at my checklist. Out of fourteen students here, there were four checks. I gave them a few extra minutes. I was testing both classes of 6eme each which has about 40 students. Breaking them into three groups each and at fifteen minutes a group the whole affair took just over two hours. By the end I was exhausted.

Watching my students who I knew knew somewhat what they were doing languish painfully on step one was a bit depressing. But I think there are mitigating factors such as the novelty of the test format, the stress of a live test, and poor ability in French (mine and in some cases theirs, French is a second language to most) that took their toll. When I added up the results 26 of 76 students passed, with the average of the number of steps completed being 3.

There were some brighter moments though: the first student to get to the last group, the look of triumph on the face of a student who had taken the last ten minutes desperately trying to open the Recycle Bin and had just figured it out, shooting his or her hand in the air with pride, the first drawing of a very sickly looking dog.

This test has shown me a lot and is going to lead to some changes in the way I’m teaching, specifically what I’m doing in lab. Giving them all the instructions for a lab can only teach them how to follow instructions. I think the first step to moving beyond that is attaching concepts and names to these instructions so that a series of steps becomes a phrase, shut down your computer, or, as was lacking today, double clicking on an icon becomes launching or opening the icon. I haven’t been pushing them enough towards that transition. Or at least that what it seems like to me. Anyone out there skilled in the art of instruction have any advice?