The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World: Teaching Tuesday: Trends in Grades in a Western Civilization Course

While this is in no way a proper or sophisticated analysis of my grades in Western Civilization (and is completely anonymous), I wanted to follow up briefly on a post from the middle of the semester. I noted then that I gave my Western Civilization students options on what kind of midterm they wanted take. The students could choose between an all essay test, a part multiple guess and part essay test, and an all multiple guess test. For the final exam, I continued this practice except that I required all the students to write a cumulative essay.

There were some interesting trends that I think reflect student engaging in some strategy to maximize their chance at doing well. For example, 7 fewer students took the all multiple guess final exam. This was probably reflective of the lower grades on the all multiple choice midterm (and the realization that they would have to write an essay anyway). Of the group that took that all multiple guess final, however, there were 7 new students who had taken either the half-multiple-choice and half-essay or the all-essay midterm. I can't explain this particular trend except that it suggests that students were unhappy with their performance on another version of the test and wanted to try their chances in a different format. More students took the all-essay final than took the all-essay midterm.

In general, the students who took that all essay final performed better in the writing parts of the class. I require a weekly online discussion board post (of around 150 words) as well as a short paper. The all-essay takers also had markedly better final grades as well. On the one hand, I'd love to take credit for this group and cultivating good writer and critical thinkers, but in reality, they probably self-selected to their strength. From anecdotal evidence alone, it seems that students have more confidence taking multiple choice exams and this seems particular true among students who believe that they can beat the system. So while the risk is higher on a multiple choice test where it is possible to get a question completely wrong (unlike an essay question where even the most vague and passing familiarity with a concept can count as a partially correct answer), it is still more appealing than the more arduous course of an essay test.

One more little test to assess student "engagement" with the course material is comparing the kind of test that the student opted to take against the paper that they chose to write. I have three papers due at various times throughout the semester, and the students are only required to write one out of the three papers. The first and second papers are due at 5 weeks and 10 weeks into the semester respectively while the third paper is due on the day of the final. The papers are similar to the essay questions that I ask on the midterm and final exams so it is possible to write a practice essay, in effect, and get feedback on it before writing either the midterm (in week 7) or the final exam. Moreover, if you write the first or second paper and don't like your mark, you can write a later paper and if the grade is higher, I will replace the grade received on the earlier paper. An engaged student who wrote one of the first two papers, then, could have not only a fairly good idea of how I will grade the midterm and final essays, as well as a chance to improve their grade on the paper which was worth 20% of their grade. So, comparing the paper that the students chose to write against the kind of test that the students chose to take might indicate whether students who take the multiple guess exam are less engaged in the course. I found that 39% of the students who took the all-multiple guess final wrote one of the first two papers. For the two essay based exams, 50% of the students wrote an earlier paper. While that might suggest that the essay writing students are more engaged in the class and more active in working to get the mark that they want, they weren't that much more engaged than their multiple guess taking peers!

In any event, someday I compare the data from this semester to the two previous semester in which I allowed students to take different formats of tests. And while I don't think that this kind of data alone tells me everything about how my students engage a 100 level Western Civilization class, I do think that collecting this kind of data might provide a basic road map for student expectations and tendencies. I am not so naive to think that my class can change the ways that students think about a class like History 101, but the more I understand about how they want to engage the material, the better I am able to accommodate or challenge these ways of thinking...

More Teaching Thursdays:

The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

December 23, 2008

Teaching Tuesday: Trends in Grades in a Western Civilization Course

William Caraher

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