> About the bridge problem. One should bear in mind that half the
> doctors practicing out there were in the bottom 50% of their med.
> school classes.
I thought they were all above average!
> CoolMath2@AOL.COM wrote:
> Here's another one to kick around. Let me play devil's advocate for a
> minute.....
>
> You're driving over a bridge. It collapses. You find the engineer
> who designed it and ask him (from your wheelchair) how he could have
> made such a mistake! His reply, "Well, I never did really get any
> answers right on my exams.... But I got B's and C's on partial
> credit! The bridge *did* last for 5 years!"
>
> Or....
>
> After being in that bridge/collapse accident, you wake up on an
> operating table. The Dr. who is about to open you up survived college
> on partial credit!! Do you want that Dr? "Let's see........ the
> appendix is on the left - no, right side!! How many points do I get
> for that?"
One approach to this is to make the exam itself a life or death
situation. Go ahead and give partial credit - but if they fail the
exam, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! That won't solve the test anxiety problem -
but that's another nut to crack.
In some sense this is not so far from the truth. I have been
working on a little spiel in which I try to impress on students the
importance of what they are endeavoring to accomplish in college. This
IS their life. This IS their opportunity to have or have not. They
are, at this crucial juncture in their lives, choosing to learn or not
to learn, and that will make all the difference. They can choose the
noble, learned path, or choose to slither down among the lower life
forms who are not endowed with human intelligence and live lives without
significant purpose, meaning or understanding.
My colleague, Steve Simonsen, who recently died from a cancer of the
esophagus at the tender age of 40, encouraged me to try such motivating
tactics - and that was before his diagnosis about a year ago. It seems
ever so much more poignant and true with his passing. I wish I were as
eloquent and impassioned as he was in the delivery of the message: that
the will to learn and master an intellectual craft/discipline is an
urgent and necessary part of living a complete life.
> Perhaps these have been exagerations. Perhaps they haven't.
>
> I have been fretting about the whole idea of partial credit. The
> scariest part is that I worry that not many students would pass my
> classes without it! The course that scares me the most is my Math for
> Elementary School Teachers --- A student (who wants to teach *your*
> children) cannot complete a long division problem correctly, but
> asserts that she got it almost right, so I need to give her more
> points!
Yeah, this has become one of the ways I motivate myself to maintain
standards. I ask myself, "Do I want this person, as a result of my
passing them, to go out and become a teacher and role model to young
children?" I give alot more D's now than I used to after asking this
question. It's not easy. I have great affection for many of these
students, and I desperately want them to succeed . . .
geoffh
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