RE; Fairness
Been there, done that.
Time to be compassionate, without lowering your standards. The key is to carefully
examine the reasons for failure. Look at type of question, year of student,
previous psychology courses, and so on. You may find that level of preparation or
type of study technique is the main predictive variable, but if 50% failed and you
thought it was a reasonable test, then something else is probably operating.
Ideas:
Have the class examine the cognitive psycholgical reasons for such widespread
failure.
Have the learning resources people at your college look at the test. I have used
essay Qs that they thought tested verbal IQ, not content.
If the 1st test covered (for ex) a lot of experimental design, students may do
better if they have had departmental prerequisites or other background. In teaching
Developmental Psycholgy, I have to be careful of this, as students who have
recently taken a human biology course will do much better on the first test, which
has a lot of genetics and heredity info on it.
If students missed mostly multiple choice questions, ask your learning resources
staff to schedule a special help session in how to study for multiple choice
tests. Let them go over your test with the students; make the session mandatory
for everyone with a D or F, and give them back (say) 5 points for attending.
Consider reducing the # of MC questions on the next test.
I canged texts and test banks to Berger 5th Edition last year. My students found
the "difficult" level MC Qs too hard in the new test bank.. They knew the content,
but were stymied by the level of vocabulary and the tricky wording of the
questions.
Once 40% of a class bombed the same essay, worth 30 points. There was a failure
to communicate. The essay concerned the application of psychological terms to a
case study (discuss this case as Skinner and Watson would, for example). I found
that the essay required too much organizational thinking for the students under the
stress of a test. They could define the terms, and understand the case story, but
not define and apply at the same time. At teh time, I gave tehm the essay as a
take home, and gave them 24 hours to return it for 2/3 the credit. Most did, and
they did quite well. I still use the essay on my exam, but now I devote 1/2 of a
class period to the use of psychological terms to describe a case story. People do
well.
You may also be too nice. Students esp. freshmen often think that nce teachers
won't have hard tests...... woe to them
"Michael J. Kane" wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a 2-part question, based on the following (too true) premise:
>
> I just gave the first exam of a Cognitive Psychology course, which consisted of
> multiple-choice and short-answer questions. The class includes many 1st and
> 2nd year students, with a smattering of 3rd and 4th year students. Based on
> percent-correct scores, my grade distribution breaks down as follows:
> A's: 11%
> B's: 11%
> C's: 11%
> D's: 18%
> F's: 50%
>
> Yikes. Clearly, some students performed admirably, but many others did
> not. So here
> is part 1 of my question:
>
> Would you leave the grades as-is, or re-scale them somehow? If the latter,
> what method
> would you choose, given that the 2 highest grades are near-perfect scores
> (98%), and the
> bottom grade is 25% correct? I'm typically not fond of finding breaks in
> the distributions
> as a means to assign grades, because I do not want to foster competition
> among my
> students. I also would like each exam and quiz score to be a number (e.g.,
> 90%, 75%)
> so that's it's easy for students to calculate their grades as the semester
> proceeds. Are there
> good reasons NOT to simply give everyone a free 10%, for example, which
> would raise
> everyone's grade and make the distribution look a little more reasonable
> (beyond the fact
> that a few students will have grades over 100%)?
>
> The 2nd part of my question is, given that many students did not do well,
> many of us --
> including me -- are likely to feel some sense of failure. Although I would
> like to think that
> these poor grades will improve the motivation and work ethic of my students
> and me, my
> previous experience suggests that this will be true for only some
> students. Any suggestions
> on how to *build* motivation and/or confidence in a situation like this, as
> opposed to crushing it?
> I've been at this just a few years and I'm not sure I've figured it out yet.
>
> Thanks much!
>
> -Mike
> ************************************************
> Michael J. Kane
> Department of Psychology
> P.O. Box 26164
> University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> Greensboro, NC 27402-6164
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> phone: 336-256-1022
> fax: 336-334-5066
