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  • LAVA Moderator: Shinji Ikari

What's the lowest test/course average you've ever seen?

I've been in a few courses/short programs that take only 20-100 students a year (on a campus with 30,000 undergrad students, so these are pretty hardcore, intense classes), and as they are intended to really push your limits, the raw scores on tests are typically very low, and this is intentional. The exams are written to be challenging analytical tests of knowledge that is not covered directly in class and they expect serious applicable comprehension of data in extrapolation and other novel situations. I had a test once that I got something along the lines of a 25% and it was an AB - the highest score was around a 50, and the second highest was in the high 30s/low 40s.

Most of the courses see a 70-80% average, and many will give As for 80-85%-ish and above. One of the ones i'm in right now, however, sticks strictly to the 90/80/70/60 scale, and it is extremely difficult to get an A. Test scores do tend to be reasonably high however (as in an average around 80) - the tests are extremely long, not exceedingly difficult.
 
In one of my physics classes the overall test average (about 200 people) was around 28%. No joke. This was because the professor made the test exceptionally long with only 50 minutes to take the test. Normally we would average spending about 8 minutes on each question, but this allowed us less than 2 minutes per question. These were all problems that required solutions, and most of us got about 10 finished.

The professor ended up curving the test in the end.
 
That's nice but he should've been fired. You were paying for the course, right?
 
60% average sounds like a mishap. 28% sounds like a complete failure to read your audience.

Either way, I'm glad he acknowledged there was a problem.
 
Cyc said:
60% average sounds like a mishap. 28% sounds like a complete failure to read your audience.

Either way, I'm glad he acknowledged there was a problem.
Click to expand...

He had some way of calculating the amount of time/amount of questions, and he fully admitted he basically fucked up his math...royally.
 
Rogue Robot said:
He had some way of calculating the amount of time/amount of questions, and he fully admitted he basically fucked up his math...royally.
Click to expand...

A physics teacher? I believe you and this is nothing to laugh over, but holy crap, that's ridiculous. I wonder if he could pass his own test - and luckily I have had great instructors on the whole.

May I give an example of one that was iffy?

I was again a psych undergrad, same university. The prof (who was adjunct, he had an MD in psychiatry, a Ph.D in psychology, and an active Freudian-psychoanalytic practice) said he would dictate the answers verbatim to his essay tests.

I was learning dictation as a secretary at the time at my job at the time, and NAILING it, a skill I still have. Not surprisingly, I passed the test with an A, and everyone who couldn't transcribe bombed it.

I shudder to think about this as a teaching method as by no means do I condone it, and I have taken a shitload of abnormal psych (lol) but I just did not find it all that hard at the time. I bet if you gave me that same test 9 years later, I'd do almost as well.

Binge Artist - :) "Read the fucking book" is a value I wish more people had.
 
He would actually work the test out once before giving it to us, but that one time was a last minute sort of thing. While we took the test, he would actually work on one, as well, since we had proctors (Grad Students) who roamed around between the class rooms watching us.
 
For the record, "read the book" is not always the answer in my experience. Well over 75% of my classes are based extremely heavily on lecture and the text is meant to be used as a supplement. This is almost always the case in my classes where the professor wrote the text. What sucks is when the professors don't tell you that... I've had more than a few classes where I simply stopped reading the textbook altogether.
 
Psychobiology .... class average on exams were usually mid 50s. I had heard (not confirmed) that the class had a 60% pass rate. Kinda rough looking around the room and eliminating 40% from a psychology major because they couldn't pass a 500 level course.
 
I took an advance physics class in highschool and about 65 percet of the class failed. They ended up not having it as a class anymore.
 
Relevant story:
I had this one teacher in college that I'd heard horror stories about long before I took his class (The Spanish Borderlands). Lo and behold, when I took his class I was totally floored; the prof was an older man who told stories like he was sitting beside a fireplace. Hypnotic voice. Extremely laid back. Not a monster at all.

BUT...

Since HS, I've been notorious for furiously writing down notes that are as detailed as possible, something that saved my ass more than once, most of all in this course. You literally had no idea if what the prof was saying was going to be on the test, or was merely an anecdote. Case in point: he spent at least half a class period once discussing the origin of the de Vaca family name at the Battle of Las Navas de Talosa. It was a great story, and most of the class took it as a toss-away believe-it-or-not rabbit trail, which it should've been. Nonetheless, a question related to that story was on an exam as plain as day, and if I hadn't studied it in my notes I would've missed it, as did the vast majority of students--and that was just one example.

As it turned out, I did well in the class. I don't think most of the students did, though, and I left the class fully understanding why it left such a bitter taste in so many mouths--and, so far as I could tell, with zero malice or caprice on the prof's part.
 
A high D, in a class that I was grading papers for. The prof refused to curve at all....despite his confusingly worded test questions, inept lecturing, and lack of flexibility for expected content in essay questions.

He does good research though. :)
 
See, where I come from D = Fail.

If I were a student, I'd be busting down the Dean's door. Like I give a shit if a Prof. does good research. If you can't teach, do research full-time. Don't burden the students with your politics.
 
Yes, the prof. allowed the mean score on that mid-term to be a fail. He shouldn't have been teaching, but you see, there is no system of accountability for teaching, including rewards for doing it well, at our research uni's, yet profs. are required to teach in most cases.

Is it better in Canada?

ebola
 
No, it's pretty much the same. Research and teaching is split. The good thing about most 100 level courses is that you can pick between a few different lecturers, but the tests are all the same, so equality isn't really an issue. What gets me, is when they mandate a low course average, and intentionally make the tests more difficult to achieve a particular mark.
 
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