Conserving time while teaching and other hints for new faculty  (Page 4/6)

Exams

Notecards

• Students perform their own review to compile the equation list.
• Reduces student anxiety
• Students think you are nice

Student-written questions

• Sometimes a student produces a clever, well-written question that you can actually use after the student graduates.
• Students have little conception of how hard it is to write exam questions until this exercise. They suddenly appreciate your work.
• For ideas on how to implement this, see The Hidden Curriculum: Faculty-Made Tests in College Science , S. Tobias, J. Raphael eds., Plenum Press: NY, 1997.

Formatting

• At the bottom of each exam page, draw an answer box in which students must place their answers.
  • Don’t rely on students to box their own answers. Label the box “Put your answer in the box.”
  • This saves immense time in trying to figure out which number is supposed to be the answer amidst a page of incorrect work.
• On the exam include a summary score sheet listing the points available on each question.
  • Now you do not have to draw one on each exam you grade.
  • It notifies students which questions are more valuable.
  • Place this on the exam so that you can fold back the face page of the exam and still see the summary chart (e.g. on the back of the 1st page, or on the 2nd page). Folding the first page back helps convince students that you grade fairly, without looking at student names. It also enhances student privacy: when exams are returned, only the students’ names - and not their grades - are visible for other students to see.

Regrades

• Require written requests for regrades to be due within one week.
• Set a regrade limit, at maximum 5% of the overall exam score.
  • Require students to dispute at least the number of points in the regrade limit in order for a regrade to be considered.
  • This is particularly useful in classes with a heavy pre-med enrollment. Large numbers of students will argue vociferously for an inconsequential change in their grade.

Final exams

• If your exam has not made it to a student file somewhere, you may be able to reuse some questions.
• If you implement a new teaching method, you can gauge the performance of two groups of students on identical tests.

Homework

Students should collect graded homework in a place physically apart from your office.

Make your first homework assignment a non-graded self-test of the prerequisite material. make it due quickly.

Many colleagues and i maximize our ta support by instituting…

1. Some (small) number of multiple choice questions on every exam.
2. Partial grading of homework.