Timeline for What can a professor do about an exam that was too long for the allotted time, after the students have completed it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Oct 24, 2015 at 17:14 | comment | added | Relaxed | Some psychological tests and admission exams necessarily are but it's absolutely not obvious that most academic assessments should be about discriminating between students. And obviously exams are not supposed to be about validating the test either (ideally that should have been done before administering the test in any kind of high-stake environment) so your last point seems completely irrelevant… | |
| Oct 24, 2015 at 17:14 | comment | added | Relaxed | You might have expected it but you seemed rather unprepared to address it cogently. None of this is surprising to me in the least (except perhaps offering “a patent” as some kind of proof of expertise, but then again I have a PhD in a related topic…) but therein lies my point: confirming mastery of a given corpus is a perfectly valid goal. It's not a “bastardization of testing” and does not imply that the body of knowledge in question is merely some unimportant “floor”. | |
| Oct 24, 2015 at 16:52 | comment | added | dwoz | If everyone gets an "A" in a test, then you have no way to discern if it was because the test was improperly designed or because the students were exemplary. That's a textbook definition of a "poorly designed test." | |
| Oct 24, 2015 at 16:50 | comment | added | dwoz | I actually expected this push-back. The point is, assessments can be of two types: either they confirm/display mastery of a given corpus (i.e. show that a "floor" has been surpassed), or they show what position in the continuum of knowledge the student has obtained. This is something that's often surprising to those who haven't encountered the science of test design...a field in which I hold a patent. | |
| Oct 24, 2015 at 14:09 | comment | added | Relaxed | You actually argue that testing should be about discriminating between students. It's true that it's part of the way the educational system works and there are certainly other people who share your view. But that's quite something else than “grasping the coursework” and it's disingenuous to pretend that those are one and the same thing or that testing inherently is or should be about that. | |
| Oct 24, 2015 at 14:06 | comment | added | Relaxed | “If every student finishes everything and gets an A, what has been evaluated?” Their grasp of the coursework! Why would it be a priori impossible for many/most students to grasp a given body of knowledge? In practice, it also depends on many other factors like motivation, skills, etc. but arguably it is the professor's job to make sure as many students as possible get sufficient mastery of the subject at hand and there is no need to disparage it as being merely a “floor level”. | |
| Oct 24, 2015 at 3:19 | history | answered | dwoz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |