In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Stan Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>John Kane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in sci.stat.edu:
.................
>I don't think I ever said the answer is not important; if I did say
>so I didn't mean to. The right answer is important, but after all
>the purpose of an exam is to demonstrate mastery of the subject, and
>a bare answer with no supporting work doesn't really do that, does
>it?
>And this brings me back to why I actually posted my query: how do we
>evaluate students who do poorly on exams but may in fact be able to
>do well in real-world situations where they must use the material?
>Saying it another way, students AA and BB both answered questions
>poorly on an exam. Perhaps one (or both) may be quite likely to
>apply correct statistical techniques correctly in the real world.
>How do we know? How can we do a better job of evaluating students
>than merely setting and marking written timed exams?
We can make part of the exam a take-home exam. We can
allow calculators, and in the near future we are likely to
be able to allow computer access during an exam. While we
may not be able to completely avoid written timed exams,
we can make them closer to the real world situation, in
which formulas and the details of methods can be looked
up, and in which "hand calculation" will not be of any
major importance.
One thing you have not mentioned is the FORMULATION of
problems which the student might not be able to solve in
any reasonable amount of time, or might not even be able
to solve at all; they might not even have "known" methods
of solution at the students level, or even at all. Except
for students in graduate courses with full statistical
theory prerequisites, having them know how to set up the
problem so that a real expert might be able to handle it,
if it can be done, should be part of the course. Using
an inappropriate method may be worse than nothing.
I expect students will NOT like this type of grading, or
anything other than grinding out answers to trivial
questions. Many will be unable to do other than this,
largely as a result of their long exposure to plug and
chug and guess.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
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