Jana,
Your exam autopsy is a well-intended, good concept as it will help the students to figure out where they went wrong and what they may need to do to improve. However, for students like me, who do not do well on written tests, it would feel like my failure is being magnified and made more important than my success. Doing this "exam autopsy" would be overwhelming for me. Reading the term, "autopsy", which usually means to examine a "dead" body of something, may have a negative reactive impact on the student and not have the desired result you expect. It's like flogging a dead horse; the flogging doesn't result in any possible positive action.
Keep the concept and expand its positive potential to help with the students' learning process. Perhaps you could make this "exam autopsy" more student-centered and less test-centered. Tests only indicate how a student did at that specific point in time. Students need to feel valued and validated throughout their learning process and progress, especially after exams if they did not do as well as they or you had hoped. A gentle, more "student-empowering" choice of words might be more effective, for example, "exam reflections". This would allow students to reflect on both their successful and failed answer strategies and to come up with their own suggestions for improving their study/exam writing skills for the next test. Having students write a "review and reflect" learning journal after each class, each week, or before the exam would help the students become familiar with the role and value of reflecting on their learning. This would also prepare them to expect to reflect after each test as a positive step.
Just thinking about Derrek and Heather's reflective + collaborative activities... Your first page does highlight only the negative behaviour resulting in the failed questions, and the second page in your long format is especially helpful for students to use as a checklist for studying before and after a test. Perhaps, at the beginning of the course, if you don't already do this, together with your students, you could have them individually reflect on what they think are successful study skills; then, collaboratively design a positive study skills checklist with a yes/no box to check for each exam question. This checklist would acknowledge their successful and not susccessful study skills. You could also design your second page with your students as a "Succes-based Study Skills Checklist" to use as the basis for their individual reflections on what they need to do to improve in their weak areas before the next test.
Keep your concept growing. I look forward to learning with you and from you and from the other participants' feedback and comments.
Out of confusion comes clarity. Leonne
