Happy New Year!
I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions, but I have one education-related resolution in case I do end up teaching in September: I will not make students take test exams where they will have points taken away for wrong answers. I know they are very popular, but I honestly think it is completely absurd to take points away. Let's see why.
First of all, let's debunk some teachers' favourite argument in favour of taking points away. They say that the purpose is to remove the possibility of students passing just because of luck. Well, let me tell you something. The chance of that actually happening is very small. A real 4.8 might end up being a "lucky" 5.2, but let's be honest. Does a student with a real 5.2 really know more than the one with a real 4.8? Probably not.
Second, it is very easy to have questions with mistakes. Some questions have, by mistake, more than one answer, some questions are ambiguous, which makes them have more than one answer, some teachers don't know anything about basic punctuation, which results in students having to guess which comma needs to be taken away or filled in for the question to make sense, etc. By the way, wrong punctuation sometimes changes the meaning of a sentence, so a question may not say what the teacher meant to say. Depending on how your attitude as a teacher has been so far, someone might be brave enough to point out the mistake. As a student, you have to be very sure of what you're saying to suggest that a question might have two possible answers, especially if the wording of the question is ambiguous.
Finally, test exams where students can lose points don't always test what students know, but what they dare to answer. These are two very different things. If students start second-guessing themselves because they don't feel that they can afford to make a mistake, are we only testing what they know or are there any other factors involved in their grades? Why is luck the only item that is considered to make exams biased? If the goal is to remove any source of bias by removing luck, that goal is not achieved, since worry, self-doubt and daring are biases as well. What's the point of creating more stress if you're not going to achieve your goal anyway?
Have you ever taken test exams? Do you consider taking points away fair? Feel free to let me know in the comments.
Comments