Assessment Tool

The assessment I provide is the second exam for MA 231.  It's typically given after the second unit on Taylor Polynomials, Newton's Method, Infinite Series, and Taylor Series.  The same topics have been taught for the second exam in 2013, 2014, and 2015.  This particular exam comes from 2015.  There are a couple of things different than previous terms:

1. I covered one less section than I did in 2013, 2014.

2. I referred to all exams this term as "quiz".

3. The exam was out of 100 points rather than less. 

These two changes were made in hopes of achieving the following:

1. The section removed is the section most students never get right, and may never use.  I wanted to spend more time on the most important topics in hopes the students will learn those with more depth and understanding.

2. To call the exams quizzes (although each exam was still worth 15% of their grade) was the attempt to relieve test stress.

3. The 100 points gave students more partial credit.  This builds confidence, which encourages students for the next exam.

4. I was also able to assess whether student paid attention to what I said in class as well as whether they attempted the extra practice problems I provided (but did not require).

5. This particular exam is designed not only to assess student understanding, but also to build student confidence.  While students' should have confidence by an exam, it's not always true, especially given the short amount of time students have to learn during summer terms.  I discuss in my Teaching Philosophy about how I believe students lack confidence in Mathematics.  I designed this exam so that it was challenging, but there weren't any surprises.  I hoped it would stimulate pride and motivate students to do better.  I've provided an example, with student consent, of how I graded the exam in order to accomplish this.  It is attached to the prompt above.

I did not meet all my goals with this artifact.  First, it did not seem to matter whether I referred to the test as a quiz.  Students still studied for the test the same way.. or didn't.  In addition, the stress was still clearly there.  Second, students still missed problems that we did in class, that were provided to them via WebAssign, and were available in the practice problems.  You can see this in problem 3.  The student didn't write out the series in the manner we covered, which caused them to miss points.

I believe I met some of my goals, however.  

For the first goal: 

students did much better on this exam than in the past.  Not only because of the partial credit, but also because we spent more time on the topics I believe are most important than trying to cover everything.  The increased amount of points and partial credit did increase confidence and motivation.  

For the third goal: 

I provide the first exam for this student to make the point clear. I designed this exam, as well, to motivate students and encourage confidence in Mathematics.  This student became confident, and, in fact, did much better on their own for the second exam. 

For the fifth goal: 

This implies that the exam and its scoring was designed well enough to help the third goal succeed.

In the future, I may treat an exam as an exam.  In addition, I believe I gave too much partial credit, even with the goal of building confidence.  I also don't want students to be ignorant to the fact they got the problem wrong.  This will cause students to go into the world believing incorrect facts.