Mind Games
Sep. 20th, 2005 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowClassroom tests are supposed to measure students' knowledge, skills, and understanding of the given material. Unfortunately, they'll always try to game the system, looking for patterns that allow them to avoid having to think. For instance, if a test has six True-False questions, they'll expect three True and three False, and use that to leverage such knowledge as they have.
I refuse to let them get away with that. In my test yesterday, question two was in two parts. Part a) described a situation, then asked a question with two possible answers. Part b) modified the situation slightly, and asked the same question again. A lazy student would conclude that the two parts have different answers. A decent but hurried student would, perhaps, be deceived into thinking that the difference between the situations is larger than it actually is (and I worded it so that it looked that way). A good student... well, about fifteen minutes into the test, one of the better students raised his hand. I walked over, and he murmured, "Did you really mean to say 'y-axis'?" I said, "I said 'y-axis', yes." He shook his head and said, "O-kay..."
You can't pull this too often; the idea is to break up patterns, not establish new ones. Probably this could be analyzed game-theoretically to determine the best strategy, but I'm guessing that randomness is the way to go.
I refuse to let them get away with that. In my test yesterday, question two was in two parts. Part a) described a situation, then asked a question with two possible answers. Part b) modified the situation slightly, and asked the same question again. A lazy student would conclude that the two parts have different answers. A decent but hurried student would, perhaps, be deceived into thinking that the difference between the situations is larger than it actually is (and I worded it so that it looked that way). A good student... well, about fifteen minutes into the test, one of the better students raised his hand. I walked over, and he murmured, "Did you really mean to say 'y-axis'?" I said, "I said 'y-axis', yes." He shook his head and said, "O-kay..."
You can't pull this too often; the idea is to break up patterns, not establish new ones. Probably this could be analyzed game-theoretically to determine the best strategy, but I'm guessing that randomness is the way to go.
