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Re: a different test scoring policy?



A strategy that I find effective that discourages "plug-and-chuggers" is to
give extraneous but plausible data - stuff that looks as if it might be
needed to solve the problem, but really has nothing to do with it.

I use this technique (which a few students consider to be "unfair")
on my examinations. Usually I will alert them to the presence of
such extraneity by giving, at some juncture, the day of the week,
or the color of some part of the system.

It is interesting to note the poorer students' concern with what
they incorrectly call "fairness". Numerical questions which yield
answers of zero are said to be "trick questions" and have also been
called "unfair" at times by some of those students. It is my
impression that good students never complain about such things.

Leigh