What business do multiple choice questions have in university? Is this a uniquely American thing, or do European universities use this format in their exams as well? It seems pretty insane to me that all my kinematics exams and more than half of each of my calc exams use this.
I've never took a calc exam that had multiple choice and I took calc at community college
>>7704724
At what school did you take calc? I'm going to Penn State.
I taught college for three years after graduating, and I gave a multiple choice section on my exams in one class (intro to groups and rings). It made sense for some questions, and made a fair exam possible. Our class time was only 50 minutes, and it's hard to test 4 weeks of learning in that time. I went for 10 questions of multiple choice, with an expectation that each would take only 1 minute... plus 2 questions that should take 5 minutes, plus 3 questions that should take 10 minutes.
I gave partial credit if a m.c. answer was wrong, but the work was shown and was worth partial credit. If it was right, you got the full 3 points. If it was outright wrong and you selected an answer, you lost a point (to discourage guessing).
I got a few positive comments on the course evaluations about those exams. I admit they might have been influenced by my explanation of the philosophy behind them.
I think it depends on your professor/instructor. I go to CC and my calc instructor maybe put one (if we were lucky) multiple choice question on our tests.
>>7704750
That's fine, unfortunately the ones I take have been scantron with accompanying work amounting to dick all. Not that I haven't gotten them correct, but it frustrates me that it doesn't properly test knowledge. When I was in the Navy, all of my exams (except for the advancement exams) were short answer/essay, which imo really probes what you know about the subject.
Of course, I know the real answer is that they're pushing thousands of students through these fucking classes every semester and don't have enough time to do a real exam.
>>7704720
I don't see the harm in them making up a small percentage of the final exam, say 5-10%.
I took psychology in first year as a joke and the entire final exam was multiple choice, but that is a meme subject anyway.
If you are teaching a damn 101 intro course with hundreds of students and maybe one grading TA, damn straight you are gonna use multiple choice. They pay me $3k for the entire course. Your education sucks because everyone, undergrads, grad students, adjuncts, even the nontenured profs, are getting scammed. (And yes even top private schools. Such as the top 40's one I'm at)
>>7704720
It depends on the course and the professor.
I mean I had a botany professor who refused to give anything other than multiple choice tests. His reasoning was that student A answers something mostly correct and student B answers the same question in a different way but gets the same the points as student A it doesn't make sense.
He thought it wasn't fair and it was a better idea to have MC exams with each question having multiple answers.
I had another botany professor who thought if you weren't writing exactly what the book and he said were correct then you were wrong. Even if you explain the same thing in a different way.
It's not a bad idea in certain courses but it doesn't belong in higher level course science courses like calc.
>>7704720
>What business do multiple choice questions have in university?
make sure you're not retarded.
i'm sorry you failed bud.
>>7704844
I've got As and Bs in all my classes, buddy. I'm sorry that you can't imagine why someone finds multiple choice to be shit, but maybe your critical reasoning will evolve in the future.
>>7704861
Oh, and for what it's worth, the 2nd midterm was curved by 10%, and I don't agree with getting above 100% on that exam.
>>7704730
Bucks County Community College
I'm at Drexel now
Hey bud :3
>>7704720
The prof in physical electronics likes to throw a couple of multiple choice questions on each of his exams, and the average for the exams in that course still manages to hover around 6/20. I've also seen them in physics 2 and 3.
Seems like, in STEM courses at least, the instructors put them on there as freebies that are worth fuck all. In the physical electronics course though, each multiple choice question is usually worth a full fucking letter grade on the exam, so even though they're still "freebies", knowing that you're going to get absolutely 0 partial credit if you get it wrong kinda fucks with your head.
I'm convinced there's nothing wrong with them. If anything, I can't stand multiple choice questions, because i'm absolutely shit at memorizing things. I'd much rather the short paragraph sorts of questions for "conceptual" problems.
>>7704861
>>7704909
How's life in Philly treating you? I would complain about being in the sticks here, except that I was already a shutin before, so it really doesn't matter much.
>>7704910
I dislike that people have the ability to get credit randomly for something they absolutely don't know, and that someone who can work through nine out of ten steps correctly and fucks up on the last or second to last step gets absolutely no credit. I know that some tests do actually take guessing into account by penalizing incorrect answers, but the ones I've taken so far don't. You can still demand rigourous memorization and recall with short answer questions, but you can't probe someone's thought process easily with multiple choice questions.
>>7704923
>How's life in Philly treating you?
It's okay. I'm a shut in too and can't be bothered doing anything other than studying and watching anime.
It's nice having professors who actually know their shit compared to some of the ones i had at Bucks.
>>7704720
multiple choice can be evil when you get questions like: a, b, a&b, neither. it causes you to second guess yourself. short answer would let you put down what you think you know and move on.
or, they can be so poorly thought out by the professors that they trivialize the questions. you can use process of elimination to weed out bunk answers or reference one question against another. one question might ask, "the rule of X is also known as the law of ___", and later on there will be a question that says, "due to the law of Y, ..."
i guess none of this matters if you truly know the material frontwards and backwards. you could write an essay on the topic or solve a problem, it wouldn't matter.
>>7704720
I saw them in Calc I, Calc II and Stats I, but not in any other courses, outside of maybe like 1 or 2 questions on a regular exam (but marked by hand, not as a scantron component like calcI/II/stats). They made up like 30% of the marks on those tests, I think more for stats.
The reason for them is to make marking easier. Calc I/II/Stats all had thousands of people per semester taking the course, since it's required for pretty much every STEM major.
>>7704720
My university had no multiple choice questions except for one third year module.
It was actually more difficult than normal questions, you could have a really a deep understanding of the theory, but the questions were intentionally written in such a way that made you really doubt yourself and your grasp of the material which made you lose your confidence in the other sections involving proofs/calculations etc.
>>7704720
The math department in my town used to have multiple choice exams. A few years back there was one of those that gives you negative points for giving the wrong answer.
Turned out you passed the exam with -5 points so people who answered no questions passed.
They don't do that anymore.
>>7704816
>$3k for the entire course
Still like that, eh? Fuck, I'm glad I got out of academia when I did. I still remember the day my brother brought home his Denny's pay stub, and I discovered that I could make more money cooking pancakes or washing dishes than teaching 4 courses.
>>7704923
>someone who can work through nine out of ten steps correctly and fucks up on the last or second to last step gets absolutely no credit.
I fucking hate those really thought out multiple choice questions where the incorrect answers are correct results of an incorrect procedure. If you do something wrong and see it's not on there, you'd go back and check your work or try something different until you get it right. But with these "trick" questions, it's like they want to punish stupid people for falling into the trap. If you are forced to go back and try again till you get it right, it is better for actually learning the material. I realize it's meant to test your knowledge, but you're paying for an education so the people trying to teach you should be doing everything they can to solidify that knowledge into your head.
>>7705906
>they want to punish stupid people for falling into the trap
Sure, people who mark wrong answers get punished. That's how test marking works.
>>7705913
But they aren't learning shit because they see their answer as one of the choices so their brain rewards them with dopamine/adrenaline for getting it right. Even when they get the test back and realize it's wrong they aren't gonna know what they did wrong, and they are never really gonna know how to do it because the way the test was formatted it reenforced their incorrect procedure. When looking back years after graduating, they are going to remember what they did, not how it's done. When I said they are punishing stupid people, I meant they are doing nothing to fix that stupidity and actually making it worse by allowing their brain to think the incorrect procedure was correct. If the test was formatted so that the incorrect answers were just random and unrelated, only the really really stupid people won't be able to eventually figure it out, and those people are bound to fail out and never use the information again anyway.
>>7705941
>they aren't going to know
if you don't check and redo everything you did wrong in every test, frankly that's your own fault.
>>7705959
I don't get the tests back, only the scantron with the grade.
>>7704781
>as a joke
your insecurity is showing
>200 student class
>22*30 short answer questions
an unreasonable grading burden for anyone given how overworked profs already are for teaching
>but anon, that's what grad students are for!
grad school is not a trivial labor jobs program
>>7704816
>top 40s
This is pathetic
>Hur dur I go to a top 67 school. Do I fit in yet?
>Hur I'm top 17 here kek
>>7705981
should be 200*30
