(Originally posted: 9/19/2012)
I gave the first exam of the semester to my classes this afternoon, and it got me thinking. Like most (I’d assume) adjunct professors, I teach lower-level, introductory courses. And like most lower-level courses, my exams are usually objective exams, a combination of multiple choice and true/false kinds of questions. As students hand in the exams, I stack them face-down. Then I grade the exams from the first exam to be handed in, to the last. Over the last several years, I’ve noticed a pattern. Every class can be divided into about six groups of students, based on the order that they complete the exam.
The first people to hand in the exams (usually after only 10 minutes or so) pretty much always fail, much to my chagrin. I suspect that this is because these people assume failure is a foregone conclusion. They haven’t studied, haven’t read the assigned material, perhaps even haven’t attended class during that unit of the course. They take the exam paper, run quickly through it, answering any obvious questions and guessing wildly at the others. That they aren’t really trying at all is obvious sometimes, as when a student answers “All of the Above” when two of the other options are clearly contradictory. This applies to usually one or two people in any given class.
After them, the next couple of students to hand in their exams almost always get A’s. These are the people who know the material forward and backward, are very confident in their knowledge, and don’t doubt themselves. They move through the test carefully, but also very quickly. They know the correct answer to every question right away. They may be graduating seniors coming back to pick up one last 100-level course for their gen-ed requirements. Or they may be enthusiastic Freshmen who’ve taught themselves something interesting in and around the high school curriculum that bored them. But either way, no multiple choice exam will give them trouble. These guys will make A’s for the course, too.
The next two phases of students, combined, make up maybe two-thirds of any given class. First, there’s a large group of students who’ve come to class, done the homework, and studied. They’re not prodigies, but they’re there to learn and intend to do so. They carefully read every question, think it through, and usually arrive at the right answer. After finishing the exam, they’ll go back, check answers, and rethink some. They’ll usually make B’s, and mayber one or two A’s.
After them are those students who are in the same general circumstances, but haven’t studied, for whatever reason. They take a little longer on each question, but having not studied, they come to the wrong conclusion a bit more often. They’ll make C’s or B’s.
The fifth phase are those few students who really know the material because they’ve worked very hard at learning it. They’ll make A’s, but not because the topic comes easy to them. They think about every question in depth, examine every word of every sentence. After completing the exam, they’ll go back and check their answers not just once, but a couple times. By now, much of the class will have handed in the exam and left, but these people are still trying to remember the exact phrasing of the textbook, and whether option A or B better fits it. Sometimes, these folks will actually psych themselevs out enough that they end up with B’s–but not because they don’t know the material.
Finally, the last couple students to hand in any exam are those who really are interested, really want to do well, but just plain don’t get the material. They’ll earn low C’s or D’s on the exam. It’s these guys that I’m most concerned about. Usually, if they’d just come to my office hours or open a discussion on our Blackboard discussion board, I could help them better understand the material. Unfortunately, these are also often the students least likely to approach me outside of the classroom. I’m not sure why.
At any rate, I only have anecdotal evidence of this breakdown. This semester, I think I’ll start gathering the quantitative data to at least track grade-vs-completion order, to see if the F->A->B->C->A->D pattern holds statistically. My interpretations as to why the grades follow that pattern are built from my interactions with students in and outside of class. I could formally interview students to see if those attitudes and behaviors do occur, but obviously I would be derelict as a professor if I weren’t also trying to get the students to change their behaviors at the same time. I can’t know if the pattern is real until I study it, but if I take the time to study it, then it’ll be too late for those students!
Such, I suppose, is the conundrum of a social science prof!