Wednesday, March 3, 2010

What I learned from the first test

I'm almost done grading the first test I gave to my class and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Looking through the results has certainly given me some good insight into the class and what they are getting from the lectures. Points I can take away:

Almost all of the students were distributed in a decent way across the grade spectrum, suggesting I got the difficulty pretty close to right.

I was surprised to see what concepts or bits of information were universally understood and remembered, verses those which were not.

I did, however, have a good feel for which questions were lobs and which were fastballs.

Despite several hints that certain topics would be on the exam, not all of the students bothered to study those topics.

Some students who appear to be barely paying attention did much better than I expected.

Some who seem to really be paying attention did much worse.

Overall, the students are remembering most of the main concepts I am trying to get across. This feels like a small victory for me and some reinforcement that I'm on the right track in teaching them.

Now, after a brief break on the lecture front, I need to start my lecture for tomorrow.
Dude. Fuck. Sigh.

5 comments:

  1. Despite several hints that certain topics would be on the exam, not all of the students bothered to study those topics.

    In my experience you could highlight in bold red letters things you absolutely guarantee will be on the exam and some students will still not bother to study them...

    Sounds like it went well. Congrats.

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  2. There is a prof in my grad department that gives the students 50 question as a study guide and tells them 10 will be on the test. Some students still fail - an this is a graduate class.

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  3. Sounds like a success...congrats!! :)

    Anon: We had a prof that did something similar when I was in undergrad...I was always amazed at how many people griped about the exams afterwards.

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  4. You finished grading ALREADY!?! You are amazing!

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  5. Antipodean, I teach science, not spelling :) That was actually an autocorrect issue. Blame Microsoft.

    But I am a horrid speller.

    Caroline, I think this initial grading was fueled more by my interest in the results than anything else. I don't expect the trend to continue.

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