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My philosophy on Quizzes and Exams:
I believe that quizzes and
exams are a
necessary evil for most college courses.
The Devil is in the Details!
Exams and Quizzes are Details!
Chapter quizzes, unit
exams, and/or comprehensive final exams provide the “theoretical construct”
portion of the course. This is where you immerse your brain in the details of
the research that has been conducted about the topics in the chapter. This is
the “conceptual” part of the course! Most of this is based on the research the
textbook authors did!
On each online course, you will
have multiple opportunities to take a quiz from each chapter of the
textbook. My intent is that you will take advantage of all or most of the
attempts for each quiz. By doing so, you read the book, take the quiz, see
which concepts you didn’t understand well the first time, re-read the
chapter and study even harder, and take the quiz again. When you do this,
you have been exposed to the “content” (AKA the theory and research) for
that chapter several times.
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It is not necessary or even
desirable for you to MEMORIZE a lot of facts, dates, or terminology for the
exams and quizzes. By following the steps above, you will not need to
memorize. You’ll really LEARN the concepts and become familiar with the
“business vocabulary” for that course content. That is the big goal:
LEARNING!
My expectation is that you will get
very high grades on the quizzes because you have read the content and dug into
it deeper with each attempt on each quiz.
How the Quizzes Work:
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For each
class that I teach, I spend HOURS carefully choosing a textbook that will
enable you to learn the content required for that course.
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The
publisher for that textbook provides tons of additional materials to be used
in the course.
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The
authors of the book are experts in the field and have conducted extensive
research from which to write the content of the book. In each case, a “test
bank” is provided for each chapter.
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For every chapter, there are
usually 100-150 questions in the test bank. They come in various
formats (including MC, TF, short answer, essay, and matching). I usually
use only MC and TF since they can be “self-graded” by the eCampus system.
For each chapter quiz, I choose about 60-70 questions from the 150 or so that
are available in the test bank for that chapter. Those questions comprise a
“question set” from which the quiz questions are displayed when you take an
attempt. This randomizes the questions so that each student who takes a quiz
will likely not see the same questions as the next student. Likewise, the
second attempt that you take of the same chapter quiz will likely give you a
different set of 20-25 questions than you saw in your first attempt of the same
quiz.
This accomplishes my goal of having you exposed to the content from that
chapter in numerous ways on more than one occasion (AKA: LEARNING the
content).
Scoring
the Quizzes: In a perfect world, every question in the computerized test
bank would be worded perfectly and the “correct” answer would be scored against
your answer upon submission. As you know, it is an imperfect world, though, and
the
test bank almost always has errors.
While I know that a certain percentage of my students have expectations that
exceed my ability to create perfection for the course, I have a “tried and true”
system that works to overcome the errors in the test bank. It’s called “extra
credit.” In every course, I provide numerous opportunities for students to bank
some extra credit points. This serves the purpose of minimizing the small
percentage of error in the test bank as well as gives you an opportunity to
bring up a grade that may be on the edge at the end of the semester.
In no case, will the errors in the test bank significantly affect your final
grade. You just have to trust me on this!
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