At 08:56 AM 11/16/01 -0700, Roy St Laurent wrote: >It's not clear to me whether recent posters are serious about these >examples, but >I will reiterate my previous post: > >For most mathematics / statistics examinations, the "answer" to a >question is the >*process* by which the student obtains the incidental final number or >result. >The result itself is most often just not that important to evaluating >students' >understanding or knowledge of the subject. And therefore an unsupported > >or lucky answer is worth nothing.
the problems with the above are twofold: 1. this assumes that correct answers are NOT important ... (which believe me if you are getting change from a cashier, etc. etc. ... ARE ... we just cannot say that knowing the process but not being able to come up with a correct answer ... = good performance) 2. that answers without any OTHER supplied information on the part of the examinee can't be taken as "knowledge" when, it (sometimes) can be what if you asked on an exam ... the following: 1. what is the mean of 10, 9, 8, 8 and 7? _____ 2. what is the mean of 27, 23, 19, 17 and 16? ____ 3. what is the mean of 332, 234, 198, 239, and 200? _____ 4. what is the mean of 23.4, 19.8, 23.1, 19.0, and 26.4? _____ and, for each of 1 to 4 ... they put down in the blanks, the correct answers would you be willing to say that they know how to calculate the mean ... ie, they know the process that is needed (and can implement it)? i think you would EVEN though there is no other supporting process information given by the examinee so, the statement that no credit should be given when there is no supporting other evidence (ie, the process is shown) ... can't be considered necessarily valid the problem here is NOT that no supporting evidence is given, the problem is that with ONLY ONE instance of some given concept/skill that we are attempting to assess on the part of the examinee, you are not nearly as sure given only ONE CORRECT RESPONSE to one item ... whether it could have been an answer because of real knowledge or, just happens to be the right answer that was arrived at (luckily for the examinee) through some faulty process _________________________________________________________ dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university 208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
