At the start of the final exam for “Principles of Accounting I,” the team of professors who taught the popular course posted on its Web site an answer key loaded with false responses to the 30 multiple-choice questions. As some 400 students deliberated over their answers, the exam proctors sat and watched — ignoring occasionally suspicious noises coming from a few cellphones, according to some of the test takers.–Brock Read —Wired for Cheating: Some professors go beyond honor codes to stop misuse of electronic devices (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Is this entrapment? If I were to leave my office door open, with a fake answer key visible near the door, would that be entrapment?
The detail about proctors (who were supposedly there to enforce a “no Internet” rule) deliberately ignoring evidence that students were cheating is a bit troubling.
When I do create quizzes, I often put misinformation in the “attractors” (that is, the wrong answers that sound believable) in multiple-choice questions. One of my favorite questions is a list of four plausible things that didn’t occur in a story, and one implausible thing that did.
In my American Lit course last term, several students who hadn’t read a particular book on the syllabus tried to glean plot details from the multiple choice questions, and tried to fake short answer questions and essay questions based on that misinformation.
I don’t mean petty details, such as “Huck eats two berries” or “Huck eats three berries”. I might describe a character reacting in a plausible way to a nonexistent plot twist, or invent a subplot that gives a minor character a pivotal role.
I do teach classes in which I expect students to use the Internet — for instance, when they have to demonstrate their ability to create and upload a small web site. I’ll tell students they can bring in a template if they want, but I won’t give them the client’s identity or the subject of the website until the last minute. (In the past, I’ve had them write for an eccentric who loves the color green, or to write about Rainbow Hector.)
Still, if I taught classes with hundreds of students, and I suspected that cheating was rampant, I’d probably want to be very aggressive about it. But I rarely give final exams, since there’s really no effective way to test writing ability via multiple-choice exams.
Another corner building. Designed and textured. Needs an interior. #blender3d #design #aesthetics #medievalyork #mysteryplay
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Yes, creating make-up quizzes can be a bother. But since the student who missed the quiz probably also missed the discussion that happened during the rest of the period, a make-up quiz becomes more than a tool to improve class disussion. So in that case, I would ask more comprehension questions based on that discussion (to see whether the students got notes from a classmate, as they are supposed to when they miss a class).
Teachers can be devious when devising these things, but it's really an art. Almost a form of creative writing. I like to add "joke" answers in there with the "attractors" that Dr. Jerz mentioned, because it helps reduce stress and gets students to actually read closely (though it can be a distraction, true). I love it when I hear people snicker while taking my quizzes.
My main "issue" with quizzes is how to deal with make-ups, rather than cheaters (I often scare people into not cheating effectively) -- especially when the excuse is a valid one, like being mauled in a car accident. I usually just allow the student to make-up the quiz for partial credit, but I don't always go to the trouble of designing a new one. Sometimes I'll make up essay questions off the cuff for them, instead of giving them the same quiz.
-- Mike Arnzen
I hate grading quizzes -- it's a real pain. I doubt any teacher actually enjoyes them.
I design the reading questions so that if you've read the book, you can immediately toss out most of the attractors -- they're only tricks if you haven't done the reading (and you're relying on a SparkNotes summary or what you heard in lecture to help you fake an answer).
The students who do the reading generally find those parts of the quiz easy, and they tend to enjoy knowing that the ones who didn't do the reading won't be able to fake their way to a good grade. The ones who don't do the reading can't complain about the questions being unfair, because they really are simple factual and basic plot and character questions -- they aren't complex comphrehension questions, since I'm typically giving the quiz BEFORE we have discussed the readings in class. The point of the quiz is to make sure more students are prepared for the discussion, which is where the higher-level learning takes place.
Still, it's very true that ANY evaluation causes anxiety, even among the best students.
I've blogged before about a study that showed students get higher grades in a class with regular readinig quizzes than in an identical class without them. They were very unhappy with the prof, but they still ended up performing better.
Even if you bomb a particular quiz, the act of reviewing the questions you missed forces you to revisit the material, so you're better prepared for the final exam.
Ohmigosh, I hate finding out that those miserable questions on a quiz that give me the sinking, worrying feeling that I must have missed something, forgotten, misunderstood, the ones that cause my heart to race and doubt my comprehension, are not only trick questions (which bother me no end) but are there merely to catch the lazy student or the cheater.