Addressing Learners’ Online Test Anxieties

“And one of the things about testing is that it’s harder to do better than you can do, but it’s easy to do worse than you can do.”

– Dr. Ann Johnson, in “A Map of the Stars: Using Test Data to Create Useful Academic Interventions”

Test anxieties have a way of manifesting in various ways. I’ve seen doctoral students, who were college administrators in their “real lives,” fall apart and walk out of comps. I’ve seen one freeze so badly that she left one answer totally unaddressed. On a lesser scale, I’ve seen student forget what they wanted to say during tests. And others have “blanked” and simply lost whatever responses they might have had to the various test questions.

Those who have more of a take-it-or-leave-it attitude seem to do better in assessments, and they don’t seem to be as out-of-control with their anxieties.

Sometimes, a kind word, a small test taking adjustment, an agreement to give learners more time, or addressing learner questions during a test are sufficient to ease that test anxiety. Face-to-face interventions can be quite simple and effective. And when observing nervous learners, it’s fairly easy to know when to intervene. Sometimes, just a smile makes the necessary difference.

Online Test Anxieties

Remembering test anxiety is a possible factor in online learning may help learners. This may involve designing tests for early successes. This may involve adding practice tests, so learners may practice dissipating their anxieties. This may include having non-timed tests, if applicable.

It may help to help students to relax. There’s such a push for performance that many students push too hard, and they can be their own worst critic, as the saying goes.

It may help students prepare well for assessments, so they may approach with a strong base of knowledge and confidence.

They should be in comfortable testing environments in their various homes and offices. They should be aware of how to optimize their learning situations. They should be in top health and not trying to drag through an exam while sick with the flu or a cold.

I think back to those exams that professors would use to “weed out” learners and think that those surely would not go over well for online learners, especially if they don’t know the professor’s reputation or the purposes of the exams. I remember tests where the grades would be curved, but the top level performers were hitting Cs if graded on a straight scale.

Continuous Anxiety

Some students do seem to maintain a constant sense of anxiety. I didn’t think about this more until a student recently emailed to try out various thesis statements for her paper. After a couple go-arounds, she said that she would stop if I didn’t like her current one. There was such a sense of a need for approval—which is something that I try to avoid. I want students to evolve their own conclusions from their own collated research and evidentiary supports. I want them to have the confidence of conviction about their work.

It’s easy to forget that students live in their own mental models…and their own consciousnesses. And anxiety may well be part of that equation.

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