Re: extra credit, GPA, etc.

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

I think it could actually be several lab tests.  The SDI routine is one
where the student labs are marked (no answers given), and students are
strongly encouraged to do them again until they understand them.  This puts
a premium on exploration and learning.  Finally the whip in the form of the
lab test provides the goad that many students need.  Richard Hake can
certainly amplify and correct my comments.  This lines up with the idea that
learning should be a process where mistakes are tolerated, and students
should learn from mistakes without incurring a penalty.  After all isn't
that how research is conducted?  The summative exam is the equivalent in
research of successful paper publication.

This also lines up with a paper given by Ron Thornton in the last AAPT
meeting.  He found that students who had superior gain in understanding made
many wrong statements, but they learned from their mistakes.  Better
learning results when students can be allowed to learn from mistakes.  On
the other hand students who concentrated on what is the answer rather than
how to get to the answer had low gain.  This latter behavior is encouraged
by classes where every piece of work has to be graded for correctness.  I
see the latter problem in a lot of math classes, more so than in science
classes.  I suspect that the extreme right/wrong mentality displayed by many
math teachers shuts off exploration and understanding.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> >
>   This
> > particular routine is embedded in Hake's SDI labs where the
> > labs are marked,
> > but not graded, and the final grade comes from a lab test.
> > The marking is a
> > good example of formative assessment, while the lab grade is summative
> > assessment.
>
> If I understand this correctly, then the lab grade boils down to a single
> final exam ("lab test").  One could make a good arguement that this is how
> it should be.  Of course, one could make good counter-arguements as well.