Exam time

Exams have been over for a while but I thought I'd do some catch up on how things went. It was a very different experience to be the one preparing the exam than to be the student writing the exam. I definitely prefer to be the instructor and not the student. The course I taught ended up being done earlier than I was given time for so I ended up giving them additional lessons over and above the course requirements and also gave the students the option to write their exam earlier than the scheduled exam time so they could get it done and out of the way which then would make for a lighter exam schedule. They chose to write early and get the course done and out of the way. 

Writing an exam for the students was an interesting experience. I'm thankful I had developed some practice questions for the students as it helped not only to find areas of weakness that I could review in class but also gave me an understanding of what to watch for. Since many of the students have done their primary schooling in Arabic and are now transitioning to learning in English, language can be a barrier for many of the students. In the practice questions I created I saw a number of problem areas where my wording was catching them up even though they understood the concepts so I made sure to be clear in what I was asking for.

Spacing was another challenge I found as I went along. Although I thought I had given enough space on the exam to do the work, I took extra blank pages into the exam with me just in case I needed them. I needed them all.

Timing was also interesting. I had 2 hours for the exam and I created an exam that I expected would take somewhere between 1/2hr and 1.5hrs depending on the student. well the first student out of the exam left shortly after the 1^st hour. By the end of the 2 hours there were 5 students left finishing off the exam. Since I was new at this, I had been tracking the number of students that left in 10 minute increments and saw that they were leaving in an expected pattern however it was taking them all longer than I expected. By giving them an extra 10 minutes (into their lunch break so it didn't affect other classes) all but one finished.

Marking the exam was also an interesting project. It was interesting to watch how the mark varied across the students. I even got an overall bell curve out of the marks (which also appeared in the spread of how long it took students to finish the exam) which was interesting to see develop. One thing I found helpful in being consistent was to mark all the exams at once going through 1 question at a time for all the students instead of marking one exam at a time student by student. In addition to keeping things consistent I was able to see if there was any pattern to how the students answered each question. One example of this was a question where I asked for the calculation of something but instead got the definition in about 1/2 of the student answers. Once I saw this pattern I reviewed the question and saw how it very easily got misinterpreted thus more of a problem on my part then on theirs.

One of the more challenging parts of marking I didn't expect was having to mark one question wrong for a student and knowing it was the only mistake on their entire exam. I never expected to feel so bad for the student that did so well. I guess part of me knows how difficult it is to get a perfect exam. 

Overall it was a good experience for me and I learned lots. I think the students did as well.