Spreadsheet With Results
Answer Hints
Each of the following files indicates what sorts of answers are considered correct and/or where answers to the quiz questions can be found in the textbook and in the slides. These files were used by the tutors for their initial grading of the quiz answers; borderline cases were discussed with the intructor.
Invalid Arguments for Changing a Quiz Grade
1. "I interpreted the question differently from the way in which you intended it to be interpreted."
One of the purposes of learning is to know what people are talking about. The better you have studied, the more likely you are to understand the meaning of a question or assignment, especially if its formulation includes specialized concepts that have been introduced in the material under study.
In other words, your ability to understand questions on the subject matter in question is one of the abilities that is being tested.
And in actual experience, the typical pattern is as follows:
- The students who have studied carefully - as has been shown by other aspects of their performance - have little or no difficulty in interpreting the questions.
- Students who have studied less carefully - again, as has been shown by other aspects of their performance - interpret each question against the background of whatever they happen to know, the result often being an incorrect interpretation.
A question or assignment is not a legal document that a team of lawyers has checked to eliminate any possible ambiguity or alternative interpretation. So the fact that someone can find an alternative interpretation of a question that is consistent with the rules of the English language does not mean that a question was not formulated clearly enough for the purpose and context in which it was presented.
2. "What I meant to say was essentially the same as what you would have regarded as a correct answer; but the message didn't get through."
One of the goals of studying a given subject matter is to learn to express yourself clearly and effectively, so that people will know what you are talking about. An important aspect of such communication is the ability to refer to known concepts, principles, and facts, using generally accepted terminology.
Accordingly, it is quite appropriate that your ability to communicate in this way should be reflected in your grade.
Students who have studied carefully and who know a correct answer seldom, if ever, have difficultly expressing that answer. The argument quoted above is almost always heard from students who, because of inadequate preparation, were able to produce only a vaguely formulated guess.
The instructor will read an answer several times, if this is necessary for an accurate assessment. So if he still can’t understand what you meant, the problem is not inadequate attention on the reader’s part.
There would also be a distortion of the grading process if students were allowed to explain and elaborate on their answers at some time after the original exam or assignment: By then, they would have had time to get further information from various sources, so they would be in a much better position to demonstrate knowledge concerning the question. But what counts, of course, is what they knew at the time when they were originally supposed to deal with the question; and the only evidence concerning this criterion is what they originally wrote.
3. "The question or assignment was unusually difficult."
It is a generally accepted policy in educational assessment to include questions of various levels of difficulty, including some especially easy and some especially difficult ones. In this way, accurate grades can be derived for students on all levels of performance.
Consequently, the presence of one or more unusually difficult questions does not in itself constitute a valid objection, any more than the presence of some unusually easy questions does.
What is important is that the overall level of difficulty of the work in the course as a whole should be appropriate.