Texas A&M Galveston Professor Hits ‘Breaking Point,’ Fails Entire Class

[Skaloop]

A bit late to the show, but I think the prof's reaction was too harsh. There are indeed students who don't and would not cheat. Who knows how their educational careers will be affected by being unjustly failed.

Though it does remind me my first-year biology class. Apparently, a copy if the multiple choice final exam, with the answer key, had been leaked and widely distributed among many of the 400 students in the class.

The day of the exam, the prof walked in and said "I have heard that the answers to today's exam have been distributed among many of you. Therefore, I spent last night writing a new exam with new questions and answers. This will not affect anyone who studied properly. To the rest of you, good luck."

There was a gasp from many people. I didn't even know about the leak and breezed through it. Ended up getting an A.

The best part was the next class when he discussed the marks. He showed a graph, which should generally be a typical bell curve. But this one had the usual bump in the middle, then another significant bump at the bottom end. He said he also gave the test to his five-year old daughter. She did better than 15 university biology students.

I liked his method of dealing with the problem.

 

[NightHawkeye]

A bit late to the show, but I think the prof's reaction was too harsh. There are indeed students who don't and would not cheat. Who knows how their educational careers will be affected by being unjustly failed.

Though it does remind me my first-year biology class. Apparently, a copy if the multiple choice final exam, with the answer key, had been leaked and widely distributed among many of the 400 students in the class.

The day of the exam, the prof walked in and said "I have heard that the answers to today's exam have been distributed among many of you. Therefore, I spent last night writing a new exam with new questions and answers. This will not affect anyone who studied properly. To the rest of you, good luck."

There was a gasp from many people. I didn't even know about the leak and breezed through it. Ended up getting an A.

The best part was the next class when he discussed the marks. He showed a graph, which should generally be a typical bell curve. But this one had the usual bump in the middle, then another significant bump at the bottom end. He said he also gave the test to his five-year old daughter. She did better than 15 university biology students.

I liked his method of dealing with the problem.

I applaud your professor's method.

 

[Patchworks]

Those students who made it necessary for security guards to be posted in his class should have been expelled first and foremost and long before this. Jailed even, if their threats warranted it under the law.

I admire his courage. No doubt this will be under review and somewhat reversed on appeal. Though I'd hope those who's grades warrant failing grades should continue to remain failed.

If they're threatening a professor at all they're already a failure in life. Grade on a paper just posits ink as proof of that.

I just hope they don't know where he lives.
Prayers that God keeps him and his family safe.

 

[keith99]

A bit late to the show, but I think the prof's reaction was too harsh. There are indeed students who don't and would not cheat. Who knows how their educational careers will be affected by being unjustly failed.

Though it does remind me my first-year biology class. Apparently, a copy if the multiple choice final exam, with the answer key, had been leaked and widely distributed among many of the 400 students in the class.

The day of the exam, the prof walked in and said "I have heard that the answers to today's exam have been distributed among many of you. Therefore, I spent last night writing a new exam with new questions and answers. This will not affect anyone who studied properly. To the rest of you, good luck."

There was a gasp from many people. I didn't even know about the leak and breezed through it. Ended up getting an A.

The best part was the next class when he discussed the marks. He showed a graph, which should generally be a typical bell curve. But this one had the usual bump in the middle, then another significant bump at the bottom end. He said he also gave the test to his five-year old daughter. She did better than 15 university biology students.

I liked his method of dealing with the problem.

I do not recall ever having a multiple choice final.

I do recall having professors saying a question will be on the final, occasionally giving the exact wording.

 

[SuperCloud]

I do not recall ever having a multiple choice final.

I've had them. A 30 question multiple choice exam for a biology class can be pretty daunting, too, if the exam is covering 5 chapters in the textbook including all the lectures up to that point. Aside from the massive amount of information in a single chapter of a science textbook let alone 5... the really challenging thing can be the way in which a professor chooses to word questions as well as the way the multiple choice answers are worded.

I'm sure you already know a teacher can make a course or an exam less or more difficult for students.

Your biology lab exams is where more written work will be required. And you'll move around to different stations being only allotted a certain amount of time at each station.

But for essay exams--like those in the philosophy department--most are probably more used to the Blue Book Exams. I've taken those as well.

 

[Skaloop]

I do not recall ever having a multiple choice final.

Yeah, this was a first-fear biology class of hundreds of students. Having to grade that many written responses rather than computer-feeding cards wasn't all that feasible. And it was 20 years ago; it might have just been a mid-term. But it was at least a significant part of our final grade.

I do recall having professors saying a question will be on the final, occasionally giving the exact wording.

I've had that too for essay questions. Or more commonly, the prof presenting three questions/topics and saying that one of them would be on the test.

 

[Skaloop]

I've had them. A 30 question multiple choice exam for a biology class can be pretty daunting, too, if the exam is covering 5 chapters in the textbook including all the lectures up to that point. Aside from the massive amount of information in a single chapter of a science textbook let alone 5... the really challenging thing can be the way in which a professor chooses to word questions as well as the way the multiple choice answers are worded.

One of my favourite things in multiple choice tests was finding questions that had answers that gave the answers for other questions. Like, "Which of the following organisms has 'X trait'? and not being sure of the answer so leaving it blank to come back to later, only to eventually come upon a question like "How does 'organism' employ 'X trait' during reproduction?" You just gave me the answer to the other one!

 

[keith99]

I've had them. A 30 question multiple choice exam for a biology class can be pretty daunting, too, if the exam is covering 5 chapters in the textbook including all the lectures up to that point. Aside from the massive amount of information in a single chapter of a science textbook let alone 5... the really challenging thing can be the way in which a professor chooses to word questions as well as the way the multiple choice answers are worded.

I'm sure you already know a teacher can make a course or an exam less or more difficult for students.

Your biology lab exams is where more written work will be required. And you'll move around to different stations being only allotted a certain amount of time at each station.

But for essay exams--like those in the philosophy department--most are probably more used to the Blue Book Exams. I've taken those as well.

Well since my largest class ever was about 60 students not an issue where Ii went.

In high school I either loved or hated multiple choice questions. Some teachers were very poor test writers and figuring out the 'right' answer had far more to do with figuring out what they meant by a poorly worded question than knowing the material.