Mike Kane wrote, in part:
> I just gave the first exam of a Cognitive Psychology course, which consisted of
> multiple-choice and short-answer questions. The class includes many 1st and
> 2nd year students, with a smattering of 3rd and 4th year students. Based on
> percent-correct scores, my grade distribution breaks down as follows:
> A's: 11%
> B's: 11%
> C's: 11%
> D's: 18%
> F's: 50%
You'll probably get lots of other perspectives on this, but here's mine. Your
distribution looks a lot like the ones I get in Intro Psych--a few solid
performers and a discouragingly large number of very poor performers.
The 33% who got average to above average scores suggests in a pretty clear way
that the material was there to be studied (i.e., the test was reasonably
representative of the material presented). You say the students are mostly
first and second year students. Taken together, those two pieces of information
might imply that the problem is relatively immature study skills/habits in the
presence of relatively complex and technical material.
Another related alternative is that the language level of the questions was
beyond that your students are capable of. (Some perusal of the questions that
appeared as particularly difficulty might give you some hints about this.
Discussion of why students thought they had trouble with items might also help
elucidate that kind of problem.)
So your "what to do question," it seems to me, has a couple of possible
answers. One is to do something about improving study skills/habits among those
students. A second is to take special care about the level of language
you use in constructing your test questions. A third is to decrease the
complexity of the material (I'm trying to avoid saying "dumb it down," but that
is the sense of the phrasing).
In general, I think it is not appropriate to adjust grades simply because
grades happen to be low. It seems to me that practice can be interpreted as
reinforcing poor performance ("why bother to study? he'll just adjust the
scores anyway"). Furthermore, adjusting grades tends to devalue the
performances of the students who did do well, something I think we should
avoid.
So my vote (this is a democracy, isn't it?) is to let those grades stand, but
to offer some assistance on study skills/habits. My general view is that
principles from cognitive psych afford some wonderful leads to improving study
skills. Thus, you might be able to both teach those principles in a "teachable
moment" context as practical ideas for improving test performance in the
future.
I'll be curious to see what others have to say.
Pat Cabe
**************************************************
Patrick Cabe, Ph.D., FAPS
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
One University Drive
Pembroke, NC 28372-1510
(910) 521-6630
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
Thomas Jefferson
"There is the danger that everyone waits
idly for others to act in his stead."
Albert Einstein
"Majorities simply follow minorities.
Gandhi
