Annotated Bibliography

Below is a brief sampling of literature central to our work on exam previews.

Johnson and Crisp (2009): An exploration of the effect of pre-release examination materials on classroom practicein the UK.

• K-12 specialists have already figured out many of our tricks. Here is one very solid example, which we discovered after our own initial publications but which preceded us by many years!

Wiggins (2019): The Public Exam system: Simple steps to more effective tests.

• This is where Ben and Greg's collaboration began in earnest. Ben wrote this incredibly long, detailed blog post about Public Exams. Greg read it, thought it was amazing, asked Ben lots of questions about it, and was inspired to invent his own variation (with important help from Ben and Kiki Jenkins and others) that he called Test Question Templates (TQTs).

Crowther et al. (2020): Testing in the age of active learning: Test Question Templates help to align activities and assessments.

• Greg was so excited to get the concept of TQTs out into the world that, initially, he didn't even slow down to collect substantive empirical data. But this "ideas paper" would set the stage for lots of follow-up....

Kaminske et al. (2020): Transfer: a review for biology and the life sciences.

• As Greg continued to develop TQTs beyond his initial fever dreams, he took extensive inspiration from this wonderful minireview. Good learning and good assessment are all about transfer!

Wiggins et al. (2023): Public exams may decrease anxiety and facilitate deeper conceptual thinking.

• Don't be fooled by its placement in an under-the-radar journal -- this article probably includes our strongest data from our first few years of studying exam previews!

Uminski et al. (2024): Undergraduate biology lecture courses predominantly test facts about science rather than scientific practices.

• The data from this important study show that, even in the 2020s, many biology exams continue to focus on recalling facts rather than solving problems. Can we do better?

Crowther and Wiggins (2024): Exam reform: an opportunity for the redistribution of academic power.

• For us, exam previews very much about equity, i.e., making STEM majors and STEM careers more accessible to all. This essay aims to put our work in that important context.

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For more information about this project, please contact Principal Investigator Ben Wiggins (bwiggins@shoreline.edu) and/or Co-PI Greg Crowther (gcrowther@everettcc.edu).