POLL: Low Test scores....does this reflect poorly on the instructor or the students..

[LuNoTiCK]

What if there are two people with the same last name?

 

[dullard]

The real key is this: at the end of the class do you think you'll have learned the material you'll need in life? If you answer 'yes' then the instructor and students are doing just fine - regardless of test scores. If you answer 'no' then I usually put the blame on the student. Why not the instructor? Well as a student you need to learn to deal with multiple types of people - good and bad - including instructors. If you get a lemon for an instructor, you need to take the initiative and read up on your own, post here for questions you have, and basically learn the material outside of class. If you don't do it, then you are a bad student and it is your fault if you don't learn.

Back more to the topic. Low test scores are a sign of a great class to me. I've had classes where 10-20% was a D, 20%-30% was a C, 40% to 50% was a B, and 50%+ was an A (Note: a SCALE - which I love - has nothing to do with a CURVE - which I detest - but that is another thread). Damn those were hard tests. But guess what? We all studied extremely hard, got our 51% to scrape by with an A, and learned a whole lot from the class. Sure I hated those, but they made me a much better person after they were done.

In classes where everyone in the world gets an 95% or above, then you never study, and you never really learn. Then it is the instructor's fault. His/her policy lets everyone skip class, not do the homework, etc, yet still get an A. High scores thus signal bad instructors who's students don't learn a thing.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: LuNoTiCK
What if there are two people with the same last name?

What if you don't read the 7th post?

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: SP33Demon
Let me guess, this isn't a multiple choice test. Teachers like this piss me off b/c they have an ego problem, and everything has to end up getting curved anyway. They want the reputation as a ballbuster b/c they have a superiority complex and think they're better than everyone, and that no matter how hard you study you still won't get it right, only he/she can. Overall BS. Mult. choice test teachers don't have this problem (in most cases).

Multiple choice is crap. It doesn't test your understanding of the concepts at all.

I had a lot of classes that had ridiculously low test averages, and I wouldn't blame the professor for any of them. If you don't understand the material, get help. If you think you understand the material and you get a 74% on a test, you were mistaken. Get help. What level statistics is it?

 

[crystal]

Why everyone so work up on whether or not they got 100% or not on a test are beyond me. With all the grade inflation now a day, an A is really meaningless if you don't know the materials. The way I see it, if you got a low score on the test, then there are still much you don't know about the subject matters (as you think you knew). Hit the books harder next time and do some more reading outside the required materials. heh...

BTW, I got average grade in college. I always saw that as me not learning the materials well enough.