Transforming the Exam Experience is a book and workshop project, in progress, on rethinking exams in high-pressure gateway mathematics courses as part of a larger learning cycle: preparation, performance, reflection, recovery, and renewed confidence.
The excerpts below include the opening introduction and Chapter 1 from an early draft.
This project is not only a philosophy of assessment. It is a record of many attempts, revisions, and classroom systems developed across years of teaching large gateway math courses.
The guidebook is organized around the full assessment cycle I have built and revised over time:
The exam reflection survey is central. I have over a decade of responses from 10,000+ students who completed Exam 1 reflection surveys. In the guidebook, I intend to share what students themselves report after exams: what surprised them, why they think they made errors, what kinds of preparation helped or failed, and how those reflections connect to future exam performance.
The larger project traces how these pieces fit together into a practical, evidence-informed model for assessment in high-pressure courses.
College should be a time of discovery and curiosity—a space where students stretch, make mistakes, and build confidence in who they are becoming. Yet in many large gateway courses, exams have evolved into something else entirely: moments of fear, judgment, and self-doubt. I want to change that. My ultimate goal is to make learning more fun. Mathematics, especially, should open doors—not close them. Math can be playful, creative, and deeply satisfying when students are given the chance to explore and when assessments are structured to reward that exploration. Exams should not feel like punishments. They can be the most powerful learning moments of the term if we harness the attention students naturally give them. Students invest time, energy, and emotion in every test. They care about the results. So instead of treating exams as final verdicts, I’ve spent twenty years designing a system that uses them as springboards for growth. Each exam becomes an episode in an ongoing story—a moment of reflection, learning, and joy.
When I write an exam, my first thought is: How can I make this interesting? By interesting, I do not mean clever, hard, or easy. I mean a question I can tell a story about later, a question I can make visuals for, a question that connects the technique students are practicing to a larger mathematical idea. Many of my problems look like homework questions, but they include small twists, storylines, or visual hooks that tease bigger ideas. Some reference sports or everyday life; others hide a surprising insight that students might not notice until the post-exam review. After the exam, I do not just post answers. My goal is to make a video for every exam problem. In each video, I explain the problem, what it connects to, why it is interesting, show visuals when I can, and then show how to solve it. I want students to see that the questions are intentional and valuable, not just obstacles on the way to a grade. I hope that, for at least a few students, this helps them move past the grade long enough to notice that the material itself is intrinsically interesting. I still show multiple ways to approach each question, explain the reasoning behind every step, and linger on the tiny algebraic or arithmetic details that so often trip students up. These small points—the ones many instructors skip—are the gold. They’re what unlock understanding for students who have been stuck for years. The videos include visuals, annotations, and a bit of humor. They’re not just explanations—they’re performances of curiosity. Students tell me that these recordings are where the material finally 'clicks.' Because the videos live on, they become a reusable library of study materials for future classes, continually building depth and continuity. But the system doesn’t end there. I teach students to reflect on their studying: to ask what surprised them, where their preparation connected to the exam, and where it didn’t. Over time, they learn how to study strategically, how to write clearly for credit, and how to view mistakes as data for improvement. The result is not simply better grades but better learners. This approach has turned assessment into a holistic learning cycle:
When exams are designed this way, students stop seeing them as punishments and start seeing them as opportunities. They discover that mathematics is a living subject and that they are capable of doing it. And when that happens—when the light comes on for even a small percentage of the class—the impact is enormous. In large courses of 1,200 students a year, even 10–20 percent experiencing that shift means hundreds of lives changed, hundreds of students keeping doors open to future opportunities.