Not so long ago, we were having an open exchange among the Faculty of our department on learning and evaluating how new concepts were acquired by students. In particular, we exchange on the value of frequent testing (quizzes) versus the famous “finals”. This interesting article was pointed out to me Tests That Teach | Arts & Sciences (and of course this always interesting Sir Ken Robinson on Ted Talks, about creativity and the fear of making mistake e.g. exams!), which seems to indicate that the type of exams, and their frequencies, you used in your class is impacting learning…
Diversity in evaluation methods used in probably the key in both being able to gage the level of understanding and knowledge retention of students and, at the same time, make sure that each and everyone can also get frequent feedback in order to apply course corrections…