Partial credit for right and wrong answer?

[Kron3007]

These are good points.  MC and short answer questions are by no means perfect, but my goal for an exam is a broad assessment of how well students understand the material and I feel they are the most fair and effective for this purpose. 

Essay questions end up delving deep into a specific topic, and I don't think are great for this.  I recall being a student and studying all the material for exams, then getting an exam that focuses very heavily on specific areas.  In this case, your performance is linked to which areas you studied the most instead of overall understanding, as well as your ability to write an essay under pressure.

Oral exams are interesting and Marsh makes good points about mastery.  This is why we still have oral and written comps for our PhD students.

[Caracal]

These are good points.  MC and short answer questions are by no means perfect, but my goal for an exam is a broad assessment of how well students understand the material and I feel they are the most fair and effective for this purpose. 

Essay questions end up delving deep into a specific topic, and I don't think are great for this.  I recall being a student and studying all the material for exams, then getting an exam that focuses very heavily on specific areas.  In this case, your performance is linked to which areas you studied the most instead of overall understanding, as well as your ability to write an essay under pressure.

Oral exams are interesting and Marsh makes good points about mastery.  This is why we still have oral and written comps for our PhD students.

Your impressions as an undergrad about exams in subjects you didn't specialize in aren't a particularly good way to judge the effectiveness of the exams as a way to evaluate students. I do hear variations of your complaints from students about the essay exams I give. Mostly, when students have these frustrations, it's because they are struggling to integrate the material and see the big picture. Students get lost in the details and see the class as just a bunch of disconnected facts and information. As a result, when I ask a broad question about a theme we've returned to repeatedly throughout lectures, readings and discussions, they don't know how to deal with it. Often, when this happens they think the problem was that there was so much material and they just got unlucky and studied the wrong thing. The real problem is that they can't synthesize the material. There's not one single thing in their notes that has the exact answer to the question. They need to be able to see how things fit together. That's exactly what I care about and what I want to test them on.

To be fair to young Kron, it's certainly possible to write essay questions which are too narrowly focused. I also always give students two options to choose from with essays to give them some leeway in case a question is just something they missed in studying or doesn't make sense to them. It's also possible for instructors to just assume students will understand how to deal with an essay exam without giving any guidance for how to prepare.

[FishProf]

Giving students choices about what to answer works well, although there is always one (or a few) who make very unwise choices....

[Caracal]

Giving students choices about what to answer works well, although there is always one (or a few) who make very unwise choices....

Well yes, you have to know that you don't have a very firm grasp of the material in the question. The students who are making the most considered decisions about which question to answer would often do fine on either question. For many of those who do the worst, it doesn't much matter. It's the people in the middle who can usually get the most benefit from a choice of questions, but they are also the ones who are most likely to make a really terrible choice.

I have started giving all students the option to take a make up exam-which is mostly for people who miss an exam. It counts even if it hurts your grade, but if you really bomb an exam it gives you an option to have the grade replaced. Very few students actually take the option but I think it's reassuring for them to know that it's there.

[Kron3007]

These are good points.  MC and short answer questions are by no means perfect, but my goal for an exam is a broad assessment of how well students understand the material and I feel they are the most fair and effective for this purpose. 

Essay questions end up delving deep into a specific topic, and I don't think are great for this.  I recall being a student and studying all the material for exams, then getting an exam that focuses very heavily on specific areas.  In this case, your performance is linked to which areas you studied the most instead of overall understanding, as well as your ability to write an essay under pressure.

Oral exams are interesting and Marsh makes good points about mastery.  This is why we still have oral and written comps for our PhD students.

Your impressions as an undergrad about exams in subjects you didn't specialize in aren't a particularly good way to judge the effectiveness of the exams as a way to evaluate students. I do hear variations of your complaints from students about the essay exams I give. Mostly, when students have these frustrations, it's because they are struggling to integrate the material and see the big picture. Students get lost in the details and see the class as just a bunch of disconnected facts and information. As a result, when I ask a broad question about a theme we've returned to repeatedly throughout lectures, readings and discussions, they don't know how to deal with it. Often, when this happens they think the problem was that there was so much material and they just got unlucky and studied the wrong thing. The real problem is that they can't synthesize the material. There's not one single thing in their notes that has the exact answer to the question. They need to be able to see how things fit together. That's exactly what I care about and what I want to test them on.

To be fair to young Kron, it's certainly possible to write essay questions which are too narrowly focused. I also always give students two options to choose from with essays to give them some leeway in case a question is just something they missed in studying or doesn't make sense to them. It's also possible for instructors to just assume students will understand how to deal with an essay exam without giving any guidance for how to prepare.

Well my wisened caracal, the next question that comes up is if you are actually teaching the students what you are testing them on.  Perhaps you are, but if you are presenting them with a pile of facts and not showing them how they all connect at a higher level, it is not really evaluating them on the course material or the skills you have gifted them. 

I would also content that these connections can be tested with short answers and MC questions, and the evaluation would be more objective.  It is very easy for students to go down the wrong path in an essay based question.