Learning through Testing

"Taking a test is not just a passive mechanism for assessing how much people know, according to new research. It actually helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques." - To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test, New York Times, January 20, 2011

I read this article when it first came out a few weeks ago, and thought how appropriate it was to the approach our master is taking with this year's black belt training cycle. So far Black Belt Candidates have been tested on two different areas, and will be tested in four others before they are deemed ready for Power Weekend (our school's black belt exam).

For many people taking a test has always been a stress/anxiety inducing trial, which taps into bad memories of school years best forgotten. And it is true that for the black belt cycle, we as instructors do want to induce a bit of stress on our test takers, in order to see how they respond. But what we really want people to focus on is not whether they pass or fail (that in some ways is our concern, not theirs), but what they learn from the test and what steps they need to take to improve.

This point in the cycle is always a bit daunting. People have been training for a long time, and while they have all seen results, they can sometimes start to coast a bit, or see a drop in motivation, or feel a bit anxious about what is coming next. At our school we respond to this often by increasing the pressure – it is now time to separate the wheat from the chaff and see who is really prepared for what is coming in May. As a student preparing for black belt weekend, what helped me was to treat each training session as a test – How did I perform? What did I do well? Where can I improve? Who was falling down and needs help getting back up?

My role as an instructor is to carefully calibrate what I am demanding from these students, so that when the people who are actually going to grade them on Power Weekend show up, the shock won't be too bad. I was looking forward to this black belt cycle, and I am quite pleased with how things are going – but while time is getting short, there is still a long way to go for most of the people hoping to grade, and I will have to be creative in finding ways to help them discover their limits, and get past them.