Timeline for In a yes/no question, a student gives the right answer and an unnecessary but wrong explanation. How to grade?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
23 events
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| Jan 29, 2019 at 21:17 | comment | added | DarthFennec | @JPhi1618 There's more to this than just whether the answer is right or wrong, I think. Creating a comfortable learning environment makes it easier for students to learn, and their perceived ability to trust the instructors/graders is a big part of that. Whether or not you actually trick them, if they feel tricked it will be harder for them to learn, because now they're focusing more on trick questions than on whether they understand the information. Awarding the mark with a note makes it clear to the student that they can trust you to keep your word, leaving them to focus on learning. | |
| Jan 29, 2019 at 15:39 | comment | added | SE Does Not Like Dissent | @Tim Example: Do not think of a pink elephant. Do not think of Mars being retrograde due to two moons. | |
| Jan 29, 2019 at 15:37 | comment | added | SE Does Not Like Dissent | @Tim There's no need to highlight how 'not' to do something (this induces unnecessary cognitive load. It's also why telling people 'not to do something' often leads to failure, as you have to think of the thing you don't want to do, then not do it, which increases the odds of you actually doing it). Tell them simply what they should do (which in turn, allows them to forgot the incorrect way). | |
| Jan 29, 2019 at 15:21 | comment | added | Tim | @SSight3 - what I mean, actually, is highlighting to everyone that it wasn't the best way to answer, regardless of who wrote it. That part is inconsequential. No need to tell who it was, except that person, and all his fellow students, will benefit from it being brought to everyone's attention. Part of being a student is to learn how to answer questions properly, and with this one, instead of purely 'no' which may get the point awarded, he shot himself in the foot. If I was marking, he certainly wouldn't get the mark, as it's obvious his knowledge is lacking. But that's why tests are given. | |
| Jan 29, 2019 at 13:35 | comment | added | SE Does Not Like Dissent | @Tim Just because the student who made the error is anonymous to the class in terms of exam doesn't mean you should isolate them as the sole example of an error, because they will know what they put, and will feel such remarks are directed at them (whether or not you know it's them is irrelevant). Given it's unlikely they are the only ones to have made an error (not necessarily the same kind of error), highlighting that specific error is redundant; you're teaching an entire class, so just highlight the correct answer. The student is smart enough to work out for themselves it was an error. | |
| Jan 29, 2019 at 0:42 | comment | added | JBentley | @Bakuriu I disagree. As per my comment above, the grading scheme only covers a yes/no answer, and as a student, I would expect this because the question states that it is worth 1 mark. Questions demanding explanations usually give more marks than that. I strongly disagree that "adding something when not required comes with a chance to get a bonus". That directly contradicts the fact that it is a 1 mark question. Giving bonus marks where the grading scheme does not provide for it is unjustifiable. | |
| Jan 29, 2019 at 0:41 | comment | added | JBentley | @JPhi1618 Yes, I could argue that - "the grading scheme only covers whether the student said "yes" or "no". (from the OP's description). In the majority of cases MCQ grading schemes will direct the marker to ignore anything that the student writes in addition to the answer. | |
| Jan 28, 2019 at 20:48 | comment | added | cag51♦ | My two cents: when OP gave a T/F exam, they accepted that some students would get credit when they didn't deserve it. Even randomly guessing will lead to 50% accuracy -- but after normalizing and averaging, students get approximately what they deserve. While it may be justifiable to penalize students for providing unsolicited, incorrect reasoning, this will create a lot of rancor (which you may or may not find to be justified, based on the factors discussed on this page), and will harm the exam's ability to provide an apples-to-apples ranking of the students' understanding. | |
| Jan 28, 2019 at 20:04 | comment | added | Bakuriu | @JBentley 1) The OP did not state that this was a multiple choice exam, just that one question happened to be a "yes/no question" 2) The question does not actually say "answer only yes/no". IMHO as a student seeing a question and a line to write on I'd expect to have to justify my claims hence I disagree with OP opinion that that question of the exam is "just a yes/no question". 3) What other students might have done is irrelevant to what you certainly know of a given student. 4) Adding something when not required comes with a chance to get a bonus and a risk to get a malus. | |
| Jan 28, 2019 at 18:21 | comment | added | JPhi1618 | @JBentley, I like your reasoning, but no one "tricked" this student. The directions were clear, they did not follow them, and they ended up writing down the wrong answer because of that oversight. If you were the student, could you honestly argue that you should get credit for this answer, knowing that you either didn't follow the directions or you didn't understand the material? | |
| Jan 27, 2019 at 20:27 | comment | added | JBentley | @JPhi1618 That approach would be extremely unfair, and bordering on dishonest. A multiple-choice exam (of which this is a variant) is structured with an implied promise that a student who gets the right answer will get a mark and a student who gets a wrong answer will not get a mark, regardless of whether they understand the reasoning or not. If the examiner wants to be able to grade the student's understanding then they choose an exam structure which demands more than just a MC answer. It is dishonest to trick a student into thinking you have given them a MCQ and then grade them differently | |
| Jan 27, 2019 at 16:34 | comment | added | Eric Towers | @JPhi1618 : You say "That makes the answer wrong." This is incorrect. It makes "that a yes/no answer was good enough to determine that understanding" wrong. Since the defect is in the assessment method, the corrective action is to improve subsequent assessments. | |
| Jan 27, 2019 at 12:56 | comment | added | Tim | @SSight3 - why should an anonymous student get embarrassed? Being taught how to answer questions is as important as getting facts right. Make a point of it in class! | |
| Jan 26, 2019 at 3:51 | comment | added | Tony D | I agree with giving a whole-point for the incorrectly reasoned answer, but suggest adding another important reason: you don't want to give students a reason not to provide such an explanation, because that reduces your awareness of their knowledge/reasoning and hence your ability to help them. Of course, you could go the whole hog and ask for explanations on every question and would then have much more such insights to work with, but the MC question is a practical time-saving compromise. You can still circle the explanation in red, write "nope" or a longer explanation if you have time. | |
| Jan 25, 2019 at 20:02 | comment | added | JPhi1618 | @DarkwingI was trying to counter the argument of other students likely got this question right using the same incorrect reasoning. My point is you can't infer anything about the other students. They got the answer correct based on the instructions - The End. However the student in question certainly doesn't understand the question and therefore got the answer wrong. | |
| Jan 25, 2019 at 19:55 | comment | added | Frank Hopkins | @JPhi1618 Why would you presume other students understood when the only insight into the student's thinking is indicating they didn't? | |
| Jan 25, 2019 at 11:36 | vote | accept | Allure | ||
| Jan 24, 2019 at 14:29 | comment | added | SE Does Not Like Dissent | @Alexander I wouldn't take that specific example (or say 'one student has put...'), because it effectively embarrasses or shames that student in particular (who went above and beyond to explain why), when more than one could have the understanding wrong, perhaps for differing reasons. It's simpler to simply (re)introduce the topic of why Mars is retrograde, and if asked why, simply say that based on the test results you feel students need a refresher. | |
| Jan 24, 2019 at 11:21 | comment | added | Alexander | Because there may be more students with wrong reasoning, if I were an instructor I would take a copy of that answer into the next class and tell the whole class that this particular reasoning is wrong and what is the correct one. | |
| Jan 24, 2019 at 2:56 | comment | added | Randall | The last paragraph is pretty sharp. | |
| Jan 23, 2019 at 19:32 | comment | added | JPhi1618 | I'd say "the whole point" of any test is to grade a students understanding of the material. It was decided ahead of time that a yes/no answer was good enough to determine that understanding, but now this student has given us clear evidence that they do not understand something. That makes the answer wrong. As far as the other students, all we know is that they got the right answer. They presumably understood. They also understood the question didn't ask for further explanation. | |
| Jan 23, 2019 at 15:22 | comment | added | J. Chris Compton | +1 for "other students likely got this question right using the same incorrect reasoning... [but you can't] identify these students" | |
| Jan 23, 2019 at 1:19 | history | answered | cag51♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |