My first semester of teaching I tried something similar. I gave four exams
with the option of dropping the lowest grade. The problem I ran into was that
if the student's received A's on the first three then there is no reason to
even attend class anymore since they already have an A average.
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Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 3:24 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Re: Negatively skewed scores on exams, within students
My first semester of teaching I tried something similar. I gave four
exams with the option of dropping the lowest grade. The problem
I fixed that problem by having 4 regular required exams. Students could
take the optional cumulative final and I would only count the top 4
(out of 5) scores. That gave students an opportunity to replace a poor
earlier performance but did not excuse them from class or regular
exams. During the
