I deal with this issue by allowing the students to replace one exam grade with the grade they receive on an optional comprehensive examination. Then there is the problem of students who spend their rainy day credits during sunny weather -- they figure they have one free exam drop, so they don't even bother showing up for the first exam. Then they have a bad day later and no exam drop to cover themselves.
Cheers, Karl W. -----Original Message----- From: Ken Steele [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 10:10 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Re: Devil's Advocate: RE: The things students will say... Let me add a second thought to Stuart's point about the reliability of our measurement. I have concluded that my empirical test scores are not distributed symmetrically around the "true" scores, instead they likely underestimate the "true" score over the course of the semester. My argument is based on the following observations. Over the course of the semester, I see students commonly have a test score that is lower than typical due to other issues--typically they have a cold or some other medical condition that is not crippling enough to make them miss the exam. For example, I had a student who had an 'A' average. He took an exam while experiencing the onset of a migraine and made a 'B' on that exam. Mathematically, this pulled his class average down to an A- (by 1 point). But the A- didn't represent his general pattern of performance. Instead it represented the mathematical effects of a single clunker grade. So he received an 'A' because that represented his general pattern of performance. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
