I would like to re-emphasize Eliezer’s point that “I don’t know” (not an uneducated guess) is the proper answer to any question where, in fact, a student (or person in general) does not know the right answer, with the addition of “but I will find out.” On my exams a (fully) incorrect answer gets zero points while “I don’t know but I will find out” gets one-half credit. You still fail if you don’t know anything, but at least you are not in an idiot damned school system. Rewarding students for data dumps when they don’t know an answer cannot be healthy. Or maybe I’m just biased because my approach makes exam grading significantly easier....
Out of curiosity: do you mean that you give students credit for professing that they will find out? Or do you have them take the problems home sometime later, look things up, do the work, and then give them half the points back? Because I have seen the latter work very well, while I would see the former as once again asking students to put down what their teachers want to hear.
That’s a wonderful idea. Timed exams but you can get (tiny amounts) of extra credit for handing in the answers later in the day having asked your friends.
Screws it up as an intelligence test (which may be the real point of formal exams), but would do wonders for learning if you did it on regular informal tests.
My favorite thing to do in physics/math classes, all the way up 2nd year in university (I went into engineering), was to ask others how they fared on tests, (in order to) then try to figure out why my answers were wrong.
I found genuine pleasure in understanding where I went wrong. Yet this seemed taboo in highschool, and (slightly less) frowned upon in university.
I feel like rewarding the student who messed up, however much or little, with some fraction of the total test score, like 10%; would be a great idea. You gain incentive to figure out what you missed; even if you care little about it. That’s better then nothing.
I would like to re-emphasize Eliezer’s point that “I don’t know” (not an uneducated guess) is the proper answer to any question where, in fact, a student (or person in general) does not know the right answer, with the addition of “but I will find out.” On my exams a (fully) incorrect answer gets zero points while “I don’t know but I will find out” gets one-half credit. You still fail if you don’t know anything, but at least you are not in an idiot damned school system. Rewarding students for data dumps when they don’t know an answer cannot be healthy. Or maybe I’m just biased because my approach makes exam grading significantly easier....
Out of curiosity: do you mean that you give students credit for professing that they will find out? Or do you have them take the problems home sometime later, look things up, do the work, and then give them half the points back? Because I have seen the latter work very well, while I would see the former as once again asking students to put down what their teachers want to hear.
That’s a wonderful idea. Timed exams but you can get (tiny amounts) of extra credit for handing in the answers later in the day having asked your friends.
Screws it up as an intelligence test (which may be the real point of formal exams), but would do wonders for learning if you did it on regular informal tests.
My favorite thing to do in physics/math classes, all the way up 2nd year in university (I went into engineering), was to ask others how they fared on tests, (in order to) then try to figure out why my answers were wrong.
I found genuine pleasure in understanding where I went wrong. Yet this seemed taboo in highschool, and (slightly less) frowned upon in university.
I feel like rewarding the student who messed up, however much or little, with some fraction of the total test score, like 10%; would be a great idea. You gain incentive to figure out what you missed; even if you care little about it. That’s better then nothing.