As to what do I think about final exams? I think they are a necessary
evil. Just because we do not have a way of determining how much they
remember of what we taught them years after they leave school is not an
excuse for not giving one. I always give about 75 MC questions and I
carefully design it so that it provides an overview of the story
the whole course is supposed to tell.
Andrew W. Bacdayan, Ph.D.
Division of Business
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71496
E-mail: Bacdayan@alpha.nsula.com
On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Michael K. Tamada wrote:
> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 00:43:48 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Michael K. Tamada <tamada@oxy.edu>
> To: tch-econ@lumen.elon.edu
> Subject: Re: Finals
>
>
>
> On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, John E.L.Robertson wrote:
>
> > Is it enough to set finals to meet the objectives of the course and the bent
> > of the instructor or must one now be able to validate that the exam did
> > measure the degree of learning that took place?
>
> This very issue arose when I was in conversation with someone from
> the Calif. St. Univ. Chancellor's office. Her position was that
> professors' exams are inadequately examined for validity, in the
> psychometric sense.
>
> Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint) she
> recognized that there was no way that the administration could enforce
> validity checking of all exams.
>
>
>
> --Mike Tamada
> Occidental College
> tamada@oxy.edu
>