Today I want to share with you a framework that I use to talk to students about their exam performance. This framework can be applied to any situation in which a person is being assessed on the spot.
All tagged test anxiety
The Impact of Confidence on Anxiety and Motivation
How do people perform under pressure? As performance-related anxiety increases, what happens to performance? This was the focus of a recently published experiment. In this study, the researchers proposed that the difference between whether pressure is good or bad is how it is interpreted.
VLOG: Learning in Medical School
In this week’s post, Cindy and I (Althea) talk about our work with medical student learners. We have both worked for medical schools for a little over a year now and we’ve learned some things! We discuss common challenges for learning in medical school, efficient learning strategies, learning in the context of attentional disorders and anxiety, and what it means to prepare future healers.
About our "Office Hours" Videos AND a Paper about How Students Cope with Anxiety from Active Learning Practices
Last month, I put out an “Office Hours Video” on Patreon about a paper investigating how undergraduates cope with anxiety in intro biology courses. What is an “Office Hours Video”, you ask? They are special “thank yous” for our Patreon supporters. Our blog, podcast, and downloadable materials …
The Relationship Between Test Anxiety and Exam Performance
Does test anxiety cause poorer performance on exams? Meta-analyses show that students with higher test anxiety tend to perform worse on exams (1). We also know that anxiety can affect cognitive processes through working memory capacity (2). Therefore, the general consensus is that test anxiety interferes with our working memory, which in turn leads to poorer exam performance… However, a recent study with German medical students found that test anxiety did not predict exam performance when prior knowledge was controlled for, claiming strong evidence against the interference hypothesis (3).
Reducing Math Anxiety with Expressive Writing
For a lot of students, final exams create a sense of dread and a lot of anxiety. As if they weren’t worried enough, that worry can actually cause worse performance on exams (1). One of the mechanisms for the lower performance may have to do with working memory.