Whaaaaaa????

[Sapphire Silk]

Got this story from a colleague of mine who has a 2nd job teaching medical assistants at a for profit school.

So she gets to the end of the 5 week course, and is preparing to give the final exam. All other assignments, tests, and projects have been done. Per the instructions of the school, she has the students review the questions that comprise the final review of the textbook in class, and gives them the correct answers.

She then tells them that this review will be their final exam next class period.

You would think that means everyone gets 100% on the final, right?

Wrong!

Only two students got 100%. Most missed at least 2 questions.

Several flunked it badly.

Sooooo, to recap folks: she GAVE them the final . . . and they still failed it.

[Mytical]

I would love to say that is unbelievable, but if I did I would be lying. Which is sad.

[Nonstop_Death]

When I was in middle school, there was an open-book multiple choice quiz.

I was one of the three in a class of 30 to pass. The rest failed.

[firecat88]

You'd be amazed how many people can flunk a final even with all the answers given to 'em.

[Iseeyouthere]

You'd be amazed how many people can flunk a final even with all the answers given to 'em.

>.>
<.<
.....
...Guilty..
(wasn't a final... just a small test in class)

[jjc927]

When I was student teaching there was a student in another class who got an 18 on an open notebook test!

[protege]

I know people who have failed open book tests. A couple of them..were in the accounting class I was tutoring. The prof was well-known for being a sticker for details, and always wanted to see how you arrived at a given answer. He felt, that yeah, calculators are nice...but you should know how to arrive at the answer--any idiot can press a button I was told that if no calculations were provided, to take off points. Since I was also running the tutoring for the final (basically a big-ass project in where you're supposed to keep the books for a landscaping business), I made that clear the first day.

Most of students took note, and made sure that everything was noted correctly. They all got As and Bs on the project. One guy...failed miserably. How? He filled out his name on the project folder, and that was it. Er, did I mention that the project counted for a quarter of his grade? A project, that counted for a third of his grade, which he had about 3 months to do it in, and could have easily gotten help on it. Oh well, I wasn't the one who had to repeat Principles of Accounting 101 the following semester

[Andara Bledin]

Some people just can't do tests.

I'm very, very glad that I'm not one of them.

^-.-^

[Seshat]

Only two students got 100%. Most missed at least 2 questions.

I can understand that.

Some peoples' brains freeze up in exam environments.

Sometimes you have one of those 'I know it, I know I know it, but I can't remember it' moments.

In some (rare-ish) people, like me, you have one of the various sorts of aphasia. For instance, I might be completely unable to remember the word 'trachea'. I could write the rest of the answer to the question, stick an asterisk where I need the word to go, and footnote a full and detailed description of the trachea, where it is, what it does... but be totally unable to remember the word.
Depending on whether the aphasia counts as a 'disability' for marking purposes, I'd lose marks for that. (Oh well.)

So flubbing the odd question, I'd consider no big deal.

Failing the exam? Uh.. no.

[Hyndis]

Open book tests are fun.

Thats because they're not trivia tests. An open book test can sometimes involve more than one book, meaning there can be a vast amount of information covered.

This means you need to be somewhat familiar with everything, and more importantly, know how to find information.

Anyone can just parrot back answers. Being able to find the answers on your own in a limited period of time is much more valuable and useful in life.

[bainsidhe]

I had a middle school teacher that would always review the answers the day before the test. As in, line by line he'd give you the exact, single word/phrase answers that comprised the entire test. He did this for every test, so everyone knew ahead of time what they needed to do to pass. Depressing that students still failed the class.

[Shalom]

Open book tests are fun.

Thats because they're not trivia tests. An open book test can sometimes involve more than one book, meaning there can be a vast amount of information covered.

This means you need to be somewhat familiar with everything, and more importantly, know how to find information.

Ah, I had this argument once with Professor Zieger, Brooklyn College's legendary no-nonsense organic chemistry teacher. Organic 1 was the hardest subject I'd taken as yet; I'd coasted through with A's in everything up to that point, and I had to work my ass off for the C that I squeaked by with. Bit of a shock, let me tell you. (Took a bit of an attitude adjustment on my part; the "optional" homework and the "optional" study sessions with the adjuncts were definitely not optional if you wanted to pass, as I found. No grade inflation in those days, either, although there could sometimes be a massive curve: in Organic 2, for instance, my 62 was good enough for a B...)

I was grumbling about his exams, which were killers. I asked him, "Why do we have to keep all these obscure reaction pathways in our heads? If I'm working in a lab and running a synthesis that needs one, I'll just pull out Beilstein and look it up, I'm not going to try and write it from memory." (This was pre-internet.) He shrugged and said, "Well, I guess I could write open-book tests, but they'd be a lot harder."

[Moosenogger]

You'd be surprised at the number of people who can't find information in a book and/or retain it, and don't care enough to try.

During my teaching stint, we'd give the students (3rd graders) open-book tests. We'd read the chapters as a group, I'd ask them questions, let them discuss the source material, and then pass out the test. Even after giving them all day to complete the test (using the book, their notes, the glossary, etc.) we'd still get kids who out-right failed. Sometimes it's laziness, while other times it's because they don't have the reading skills needed to skim pages and find important information.

[Merriweather]

I had two teachers in high school - two different subjects, two different schools - who became convinced that a lot of students were failing tests because they weren't reading the questions carefully, or simply not paying attention. Each one decided to prove his point.

One gave us an unanounced test, which would count for quite a few points of our grade. He stressed reading the questions carefully as very important. The test consisted entirely of questions like "what year was the war of 1812 fought" and "who is buried in Grant's tomb", along with a few more complex like "if a plane crashes on the border of Canada & the US, where are the survivors buried". It was amazing how many people failed, complaining we'd never studied those subjects in that class.

The other teacher took a different approach. He gave us a test, stressing that it was a very unique test, to test how well we could follow directions, and the most important thing was to read it carefully, and follow each and every instruction exactly, no matter how odd.

First instruction said to read the entire test carefully before proceeding to the second question. The very last instruction, at the end of the paper, said "now you've read the entire test, put your name at the top of the paper, sit back, and do absolutely nothing else". In between, were things such as standing up and sitting down, walking to the blackboard and writing an answer, etc.

Those of us who actually read the entire thing got to sit back and watch quite a show of idiots that day, LOL. And the teacher proved his point quite well.

[dalesys]

Who killed Cain?

*DING* Abel!

--- how to torpedo a scripture quiz