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How allowing multiple attempts on exams works for you...e.g. How do true/false questions!? :)

How allowing multiple attempts on exams works for you...e.g. How do true/false questions!? :)

by Christian Seberino -
Number of replies: 3
I'm intrigued by notion of allowing students multiple attempts at questions
when taking exams.

I'm wondering how that works for people.

For example, it seems like that will prevent possibility of multiple choice
exams with few choices.  

Besides the multiple choice question problem...I'm wondering if there
are other problems that will crop up.

Sincerely,

Chris
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: How allowing multiple attempts on exams works for you...e.g. How do true/false questions!? :)

by Aaron Wangberg -
Some colleagues and I have used WeBWorK for in-class quizzes for a couple of years.  We've tended to avoid multiple choice and true false questions, instead using the power of the answer checkers to let students enter mathematical expressions or values.  The main issue we've found is that students aren't accustomed to working with multiple chances on exams and being told immediately that their answer to a test problem is wrong.  When told their answer is incorrect, many students rewrite their answer using an equivalent form.  Some try to solve the problem in a different way, but we've found very few will correct their mistakes.  More likely, students overlook their mistake and 'fix' something else that they are less sure about.  There were some other issues, too:  We couldn't include as many problems on quizzes, since 'n' chances at a problem could turn a 5 question quiz in to a n*5 question quiz.  Also, the 'all or none' credit aspect seemed to impact student moral during the quizzes.

One of the things we have done lately is to have students find and discuss the types of mistakes that are being made on the quizzes.  This seems to provide value for the course and also helps students transition to immediate-feedback quizzes.

Aaron 
In reply to Aaron Wangberg

Re: How allowing multiple attempts on exams works for you...e.g. How do true/false questions!? :)

by Christian Seberino -
Aaron

Thanks for your comments!  It didn't occur to me that allowing more tries could
make things worse but if it doubled/tripled the time needed to take a test that would be bad.

I was hoping 2 chances would smooth over a lot of regrade issues but it looks like it actually can introduce more problems!  I think I'll just keep things as they are.  Interestingly, I think Mike Gage allows multiple tries and he's pleased with it.

cs


In reply to Aaron Wangberg

Re: How allowing multiple attempts on exams works for you...e.g. How do true/false questions!? :)

by Arnold Pizer -
Hi,

You could try another option which would be to allow students one attempt on the in class exam but then allow multiple attempts for reduced credit for say 24 hours after the exam.  You could extend the due date 24 hours and set up reduced scoring for that period. 

This would be very similar to the way I used WeBWorK way back in the fall of 1996. I taught a small class (the first class WeBWorK was ever used in) and instead of giving partial credit on exams, I used WeBWork for partial credit. The exams were standard paper exams but at the end I told the students the correct answers and gave them 24 hours to do whatever problems they missed on WeBWorK. The WeBWorK problems were the same as the exam problems except for constants. If they got the WeBWorK problem correct, the student was given 25% of whatever they missed on that problem. The average exam score went up from around 70 to 75 or so. Not a big difference but most students put a big effort into this. About 20% didn't bother, 60% did all the problems they missed on the exam and 20% did all the problems (even thought they didn't get any extra credit for the ones they got correct on the exam). They liked it and I liked it. I never tried this in a large class because to do it you would have to record and enter student exam scores on individual problems (which is too onerous for the professor) or require students to do the whole exam on WeBWorK (which is too onerous for the student). But in your case where you are already using WeBWorK for the exam, the process is almost automatic. If you wanted you could set thing up initially with reduced credit and then all you would have to do is, after the exam finishes, switch from allowing one attempt to allowing as many as you want.

Arnie