Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!cd
From: cd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Clarence K. Din)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity
Message-ID: <27081@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 7 Jan 89 19:42:42 GMT
References: <4550@homxc.UUCP> <4847@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <542@mccc.UUCP> <548@mccc.UUCP> <9286@ut-emx.UUCP>
Reply-To: cd@bu-cs.bu.edu (Clarence K. Din)
Followup-To: comp.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Boston University
Lines: 24

In article <9286@ut-emx.UUCP> nather@ut-emx.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:

>In my view, there are NO good multiple-choice tests -- the very format
>precludes its use as a sensitive probe of a student's understanding.
>When I was in college I found I could usually pass any MC test, even
>if I knew nothing of the subject. (We bet bottles of beer in those
>days, and I won many more than I lost.)  The procedure is to read
>each response and see which is the most likely, semantically, to fit
>with the question or statement it is supposed to complete.  In more
>than half the cases the semantics alone show the correct -- i.e. the
>"original" completion first composed by the test originator -- with
>the other possible responses showing their "tacked-on" quality.

Case in point: I recently took a Cell Biology Final without ever taking
a cell bio course (I've never taken college chem, but I have taken an
intro bio course three years ago).  Yes, I took it for fun.  It was a
two-hour MC test with 5 choices for each question.  I finished it in
less than an hour and ended up with ~40%.  This was the class mean.  The
test WAS NOT scaled, so the best I could've done, by random guessing, was 20%.

Note of above: Yes, I get my jollies by taking finals for the fun of them.


Clarence