Long time passing ...
October, which began so promisingly for keeping SD on schedule, has certainly disappointed. More disappointingly, there is no one to blame - if blame should be assigned - but myself. It has been slightly busier on the non-home workfront because I have been teaching a second course on a regular basis. I also served as a replacement for an absent professor in another class and was asked to prepare a "Waiver Exam" for the course that I was hired to teach.
It was my first experience with preparing a Waiver Exam and the idea had to be explained to me, although it makes sense. Evidently, the small university where I teach has a policy of allowing transfer students who have taken courses similar to those offered the option of taking a "Waiver Exam" designed to cover the entire course syllabus. The exam is graded on a Pass-Fail basis and, if the student passes, he/she is granted full credit for the course. I still haven't quite understood whether or how the P-F is included in the student's overall grade point average (GPA), but that is someone else's problem.
So drafting a final exam for someone who had not been and would not be participating in the class proved to be interesting. The challenge was to design it so that it was reasonably fair yet as comprehensive with the concepts as a final exam that I would design for the class. So it took quite a lot of time and effort to prepare. I was, fortunately, compensated for it by an additional lump sum. But, as with the preparation time involved for the regular class, when I actually divide that lump sum by the time spent already - and still to be spent, because I must also grade that exam - the lump sum shrinks almost to insignificance.
We just finished half-term last week, which meant that my regular classes had to take mid-term exams as well. That also took thought and preparation in addition to regular class preparation. Fortunately, I have now completed grading the exams and was somewhat surprised to discover that, for once in my teaching career, the results actually form an almost perfect bell curve. There are some As and Bs - about in the numbers that I had expected - with a multitude of Cs sliding into Ds. Unfortunately, there were also some Fs. One of the Fs is an aberration, I am sure. One individual, whose class participation until the week before the exam had been excellent, fell ill and thus missed the in-class review. I don't believe that the student had fully recovered by exam time; certainly the grade would not have been an F otherwise. Another student with a F had not even attempted to respond to a 30-point question and I don't really understand why. The student had responded to a similar 30-point question and done credibly well. Had that student even begun to answer the second, the grade would likely not have been F.
So, it is reassuring to realize that the exam was likely a fair one. Some students' study skills seem to be lacking, especially since there were no surprises or tricks on the exam. They all must realize that they need to do the work. Even the two 30-point questions provided all the factual information that the students needed. What they needed to demonstrate for those was that they understood that information and how it related to the course so far. Most did quite well with them; a couple did superbly well. So that is also heartening.
Whatever the results, there is still time enough to turn things around in a positive sense grade-wise before the end of term. I hope that the students are enjoying their half-term break. I know that I am enjoying mine so far - even more so once I will have completed grading the Waiver Exam!
Perhaps SD will also come to life again - at least for a time - and October won't be yet another month of "lost" resolutions.
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