Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: icespeed on November 15, 2005, 07:07:01 pm
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this is a random *****. i hate exams. i hate studying for them. i hate doing them. i hate the aftermath, where everyone stands around comparing answers and i've got *every single one of them* wrong. and i hate the very idea of exams. why is it, in a course supposedly doing problem-based learning, that we're doing exams? PBL is all about students going off and learning what they think they need to know. to be examined on something specific limits our freedom to study what's interesting, to studying what's on the syllabus. exams defeat the point of PBL. far out.
argh argh argh.
i have one more exam, btw. so i'm in the middle of the dread period. and what am i doing on hlp?
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Because we're too stupid to think of a better way of testing students.
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Because we're too stupid to think of a better way of testing students.
Here's a better way to test students: Put the group of students you want to test in a deep pit filled with Cobras. The ones that make it out alive graduate, the ones that don't... well, you get the idea...
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^^ that sounds just a little harsh.
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Here's a better way to test students: Put the group of students you want to test in a deep pit filled with Cobras. The ones that make it out alive graduate, the ones that don't... well, you get the idea...
The university of life?
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All that would do would be to sort the morbidly selfish from the slow and weak.
And quit your *****ing.
It's about time someone forced some girls to take proper ****ing tests. All this 'equality in education' bull**** is why I failed college.
If it'd been all tests, I'd've sailed through. But because girls are ****ing balls at exams, half the goddamn grade percentage was coursework - which all men are genetically predispositioned to hate and avoid at all costs.
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If you want to really test them, give them an internship or coop. If they survive and don't get fired, they're ready for the workforce. If they fail, then they're in the wrong field.
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Exams don't really seem to prove much in the working world other than your ability to absorb lots of information. Bearing in mind that the pass mark for uni exams here is 40% you can see that it's possible for someone to get a degree and know less than half the material on the day.
Coursework isn't too great either, you write pages and pages of what you think the lecturer wants to hear in a style the lecturer likes and it's usually all stuff that's taken from books and re-written.
Hands on experience as GW says is probably the single best way to assess a person's skills. Degrees with DIS (Diploma in Industrial Studies) i.e. work placement get far more kudos from employers than those that contain no work placement.
What makes you think that they tailored the assessments to suit women an0n? Some courses just don't work with examinations.
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Because that way he can blame stuff on somebody besides himself.
And I think all that Mefustae was suggesting was natural selection with a sadistic twist...
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I disagree with the idea that exams are useless. A well designed exam can be valuable for so-called "problem solving" as much as anything else. The problem is the introduction of idiotic testing schemes like multiple choice tests.
For example, I have a top notch calculus teacher at my school. His class is very thorough and is likely more in-depth than the college courses offered at the local uni. The tests are very hard, and it's not because there's lots of stuff to memorize. It's because the problems genuinely stretch your understanding of the concepts of calculus and all the other math you've taken (e.g. tough min-max problems, limit proof using the delta-epsilon definition, etc.).
It's worth noting that my calculus teacher is also very reasonable, so for the first quarter of the class the minimum percentage for an A was 84%. The hard tests aren't for flunking students out, but for challenging the students with interesting problems.
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Problem solving exams are not the norm though. Maths and logical problem solving skills are well served by test papers as they require the person to take what they know and to use it to solve a problem.
Most other exams simply ask the student to regurgitate facts.
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It's worth noting that my calculus teacher is also very reasonable, so for the first quarter of the class the minimum percentage for an A was 84%. The hard tests aren't for flunking students out, but for challenging the students with interesting problems.
When I was a student at my (former) university, I had to take physics (along with all the other engineering majors). Everyone hated it. It isn't much of a surprise that the average exam scroe for 211 (basic kinematics stuff) was around 50. The average for 213 (gaussian surfaces, amoung other weird ****) for around 20 or so. That was a year before I hate to take it.
When I had to take it they got in a new professor. The class average improved up to 70, but he still had this uber curve of 50% or better was passing.
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My experience as a math major is that tests are simply a retarded idea in anything beyond the elementary classes, especially in graduate ones. If you get some experience with upper level classes, you will come to realize that you can safely ignore about 50% of the material you "learn" throughout the semester (and 80% of what is done in class) because there is no way for that stuff to be on a test. The problems on a test are of a particular kind, simplified versions of the homework problems, where the low difficulty is made up for by the time constraint and lack of reference materials.
The homework problems are typically much more complex and a far better indicator of how well you know the stuff, but are usually only a small fraction of the grade. A handful of professors give take home tests, but those are extremely rare. I had one last semester though. After the final exam is over, you can proceed to forget everything you learned during the semester since you never really studied it seriously in the first place, just well enough to know how to do tests on it. I know I don't remember much of what I did last year except the stuff in my specific area of interest. :D
You need a certain set of skills to do well on tests, one that is completely different from what is needed to solve real problems or do actual research in that field. The math professors in fact have a term for getting too used to this mode of thinking, the Putnam syndrome (from the Putnam competition exam), since there are so many students in math Ph.D. programs who have gotten that far because they could excel in tests but have no clue how to do any research.
In my abstract algebra class, the averages for the first two tests have been 59 and 65, with the medians a few percentage points off from that. 90 is by default an A in any class unless otherwise specified, although the professor said he might be doing "slight curving." Of course, I got 87 and 95 so I'm not too concerned, but I wouldn't want to be in the situation of most of the other students in the class. :p
There is a test in my intro Java class tomorrow. The average for the first test there was 67 and the professor said there might be a couple percentage points' curve, so the average grade would be around 70 (a low C). Of course, they tend to give a lot lower grades in intro classes in general, with only about 7-12% A's. I got a 90 on that one, which a borderline A. The tests together are worth about 50% of the grade in this class, so I better make sure I do well on this one.
One other feature of lower level classes is weekly quizzes. These appear in the Java class and make tests look like a great idea; as far as I can see, the only purpose of these is to irritate students and make them hate the class. :p These fortunately aren't generally seen in upper level things, but there is one guy in the math department who gives them for graduate classes (the stuff on him on www.ratemyprofessors.com is funny to read :D). Needless to say, I'm not about to do anything with him.
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It's worth noting that my calculus teacher is also very reasonable, so for the first quarter of the class the minimum percentage for an A was 84%. The hard tests aren't for flunking students out, but for challenging the students with interesting problems.
When I was a student at my (former) university, I had to take physics (along with all the other engineering majors). Everyone hated it. It isn't much of a surprise that the average exam scroe for 211 (basic kinematics stuff) was around 50. The average for 213 (gaussian surfaces, amoung other weird ****) for around 20 or so. That was a year before I hate to take it.
When I had to take it they got in a new professor. The class average improved up to 70, but he still had this uber curve of 50% or better was passing.
Ugh... my physics prof is audacious, i got a test back today on wich he took 5 of 10 marks off becasue i frogot to convert from kph to m/s
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What makes you think that they tailored the assessments to suit women an0n?
The only reason they introduced coursework was because studies started showing that girls sucked at exams, and all the asshole politicians needed a way to make it look like kids were learning more under their administration.
It's also why pass requirements are horrifically low nowadays.
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The only reason they introduced coursework was because studies started showing that girls sucked at exams, and all the asshole politicians needed a way to make it look like kids were learning more under their administration.
It's also why pass requirements are horrifically low nowadays.
If pass requirements are so horrifically low, then why did you fail college?
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Because 40% of my grade was coursework.
Plus I had like 30% attendance for the last few months, and spent the rest of my time in the pub.
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Because 40% of my grade was coursework.
Plus I had like 30% attendance for the last few months, and spent the rest of my time in the pub.
So, really, it's the pubs fault then.
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Just to be the salt in your wounds...
I've finished exams and am on holidays! ^_^ :p
(Good Luck! ;) :D )
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Man, my exams dont even start for another few weeks...
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I have four weeks. Four weeks to sit and worry. Gah, I'm so tired of school.
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Just to be the salt in your wounds...
I've finished exams and am on holidays! ^_^ :p
(Good Luck! ;) :D )
Bah. You beat me by two days.
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Still got 3 weeks or so. Not worried at all, except maybe numerical computing since the prof is in competant.
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I have chem and electrical engr exams tomorrow. ECE shouldn't be too bad, but chem is going to eat me alive.. :shaking:
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And I got a quiz in Educational Theory and Practice tomorrow worth 15% of my total grade, and I've hardly done any of the reading for it. My own **** fault. I've gotten through about 3 exams without studying and gotten 80% or more on them, but I don't how I would pull this off. I hate that class.
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I have chem and electrical engr exams tomorrow. ECE shouldn't be too bad, but chem is going to eat me alive.. :shaking:
You know that EE is the abbreviation for electrical engineering, right? ECE is Electrical and Computer Engineering.
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I have chem and electrical engr exams tomorrow. ECE shouldn't be too bad, but chem is going to eat me alive.. :shaking:
You know that EE is the abbreviation for electrical engineering, right? ECE is Electrical and Computer Engineering.
In the college I used to go to, all Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering classes had the ECE prefix.
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They probably have a combined department, then, rather than giving them each their own.
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ahahahaha.... finished.
we're going to a beachside kiosk restaurant cafe thingy, you know, those things, to relax now. it's next to the beach. where there's sand and sea and water and seagulls and things. only it's a bit cold for swimming.
i think i've just lost half my iq points with that last exam, it was totally evil, things they told us weren't going to be in it were, and they had random focus on totally irrelevant topics. i have to say though, i like oscas better... OSCA: where you have ten minute stations and you can't go back to a station you've already done. better than multichoices anyway.
hahaha... oh so high.
anon, you're an idiot. in my course we get assessed on whether or not we pass exams. so it's got nothing to do with the whole women thing. we have one non-exam assessment each semester, which we also have to pass. and if we fail exams, we do that semester again. i mean one exam fail, the rest we can get perfect, but one exam fail, that's a waste of that semester. so shut up about my *****ing. i think i got a right to *****.
see all later, i am now officially on holidays.
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Med school? My mum's doing that. Nasty. I'm sure you'll have done just fine - now enjoy your time off. :)
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Get drunk.
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anon, you're an idiot.
You just now figured that out? :p
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Don't worry, he doesn't actually hate women like he claims. He's just in the "Misogyny is cool" phase of life.
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Yeah, our exams and tests make up about 90% of the years work..
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They probably have a combined department, then, rather than giving them each their own.
They do at OSU. It kinda bugs me sometimes.
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They probably have a combined department, then, rather than giving them each their own.
They do at OSU. It kinda bugs me sometimes.
You go to Oregon State University or Ohio State University?
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A word of advice from someone who's just finished jumping through the hoops that are exams...
1) Study hard
2) Take frequent breaks while studying so it doesn't completely eat through your life
3) When you go to the exam, don't think about the exam, don't try and remember anything about the exam, don't talk to anyone about anything specific about the exam, and when you leave, do not talk about the exam or think about it or anything of the sort.
Mind you this only works for me but there are cognitive studies done that suggest cramming 12 hours before exams is bad for keeping things in memory and attempting to recall information before getting to the exam can be bad because it will expose what you don't know, causing stress, which releases chemicals into the brain that further inhibit short term memory recall and prevent you from doing well on the exam.
I've blanked out enough times that I eventually had to come up with a routine and a method of doing it.
Take a break sometime soon and do some net research on memory recall and cognition.
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Mind you this only works for me but there are cognitive studies done that suggest cramming 12 hours before exams is bad for keeping things in memory and attempting to recall information before getting to the exam can be bad because it will expose what you don't know, causing stress, which releases chemicals into the brain that further inhibit short term memory recall and prevent you from doing well on the exam.
That actually works for me. I don't worry about a test until the night before it and only spend whatever time is needed going through everything then. The stuff stays fresh in my memory that way.
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I'm a fundamentally lazy student. I have two more exams to go - I should have three more but I didn't hand in all my assignments, so It's impossible for me to pass the class (even if I got 100% on the exam I'd get a U (did not complete)) and I just can't be bothered going. It's an easy class though (just work intensive, which is why I suck at it).
I also refuse to apply myself or study - I honestly believe I could be topping most of my classes if I made the effort - half the time I know the stuff before I'm told it, just through general reading and wikipedia and stuff, the other half I understand the concepts behind it even if I'd never seen the dots connected before.
That said, it's a beautiful day outside and I'm going to go swimming. I don't care :D
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I have a final tomorrow morning in eight hours, then I'm done for the quarter.
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My study method used to be go to class, read the material, and I'd be ready to go on test day. After many years of college, I've slipped to cramming 2-3 days before the test, then taking it, then getting through the class. I used to be really good about studying and all. IceFire's right about retaining it in memory like that. I can hardly remember any classes I've taken last semester, especially my business courses. I remember Accounting because I had to go every day in order to understand anything at all. This semester's been the worst (they just keep getting worse and worse) and next semester is my last semester. Then I'll be grad-ja-tated with a degree in IT.
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They probably have a combined department, then, rather than giving them each their own.
They do at OSU. It kinda bugs me sometimes.
You go to Oregon State University or Ohio State University?
Sorry, didn't clarify. Oregon State. :nod: