Well that didn’t take long…
Already we are getting the first complaints about the exams. The exams we finished today.
I have never received any complaints about exams in computer science, biology or statistics, and I have taught or censored plenty of those.
Molecular medicine is different, it seems.
I got two formal complaints last term, where I tought a class for those students, and we are already getting complaints now about the exams I censored this week.
What is it with these people? Is the only acceptable grade the top grade?
Objectively, if you look at the distribution of grades, something is wrong. We have given way too many top grades. But now we are getting complaints from the students that didn’t get the top grade. They feel their grade is unfair.
Now, of course that could be true. An oral exam does have the risk of being somewhat subjective. We could be treating the students unfairly. Still, we try very very hard not to. We make plenty of notes during the exams. We compare their presentation against the learning objectives. We have a list of important and less important points that they need to get right and we base our grade on those.
They clearly don’t trust us to be able to make that evaluation, though.
If they feel the exam went well, it must have gone well. If we give them a low grade, something must be wrong.
After each exam, we spend 2-3 minutes evaluating the exam with the student. Telling her what was good and what was bad. That used to be enough, but with this batch, it clearly isn’t. They are still going to question everything we do, ’cause if they don’t get the grade they wont, clearly we must have made some mistake. They surely didn’t.
Fuckheads.
I’m fed up with this.
Next time, maybe multiple choice exams is the way to go. Those are terrible at actually evaluating what the students can do – abover pre-structural knowledge about the topics – but if they really want sub-optimal teaching I sure as hell can give it to them.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:41 am
I can certainly sympathize with this from my experience as a TA in KTH, Stockholm. Some students clearly feel they should be given top grades just for turning up and putting in the effort. What is so difficult to understand about fulfilling the criteria that have been set up?