Class average excluding the students who did not do the test, was 80% (B-), the same as class tests 1 and 2. A, 28; A-, 15; B+, 11; B, 13; B-, 13, C+, 12; D, 30; Fails, 36, including 29 no-shows. No one got everything right, but 8 students got 100% given my grading algorithm.
The large number of no-shows is a bit alarming; I think only 11 of them have sufficiently high test grades from Class tests 1 and 2 to decide it was not worth taking this test (I take the best two grades from the four tests). Maybe another ten or so feel comfortable sitting on a B. But my advice to all students is to do all four tests no matter how good your best two grades: the final is like one of these tests, worth a lot more, and so the more practice the better.
The weird grade distribution, the inverted U-shape instead of a bell curve, is still there: 43 A’s and 66 D’s and fails. That last number is a bit alarming, but it is distorted by the no-shows. The number of actual fails (people who did the test and failed) is really down on last time – just 7 this time, compared with 18 last time. Still too high, but at least in the right direction.
This test was evidently a bit harder than the previous tests. The number of A’s is down, which is only partly due to the 20 or so no-shows who presumably would have got an A if they could have been bothered doing the test. The number of students getting 100% or more is substantially down. Again, this might be partly due to the accomplished no-shows.
Drilling down, the class did pretty well on critical analysis of a media report. Where things fell over was in the questions relating to class material. For this test, I intentionally asked more questions that you really needed to be in class – and paying attention – to get right. For instance, I talked about Barry Marshall’s discovery that a bacterium causes stomach ulcers, not stress. Rather famously, Barry Marshall himself drank a solution of this bacteria in order to test that hypothesis. This made him sick, but it did not give him ulcers. So, to the extent that a single data point can show anything, it was evidence against his hypothesis. And I emphasized that in class. Yet most (129) of the students said his absence of ulcers was evidence consistent with his hypothesis. Worse, a further 23 said it proved his hypothesis (I don’t know how many times I have talked about the difficulty of ‘proving’ anything in science).
So I conclude that I have to emphasize to the class what is going on here. I think students assume all the notes will be on the handouts. Not mine. They are skeletal (and I am making them more and more skeletal as the attendance drops off). People need to come to class and engage. Many students are. Do the rest just think I am turning up myself just for fun?
There are two students who are doing very well on class tests without attending class much. I wonder how that is possible. I so hope there is not some cheating going on.