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Re: [Phys-l] What's the point of teaching to the test when it's graded inaccurately?




There is also a difference between being able to measure a quantity for a group versus being able to measure it for an individual.

For example, a 40 question multiple choice test might not do a good job measuring whether an individual student has mastered physics because it has too few questions and random computational errors and topical variations might play too heavy a role, while the same test might do a fine job of measuring if _I_ have done a good job getting my students overall to understand physics since some of those problems will tend to wash out over the whole group.

Zeke


----- Original Message ----
From: curtis osterhoudt <flutzpah@yahoo.com>
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 11:36:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] What's the point of teaching to the test when it's graded inaccurately?

As a slight tangent to this (but I'm always up for a good advocatus diaboli
argument), I went to a talk a few weeks ago by a researcher who is specializing
in finding correlates between measureable (functional MRI, etc.) brain
activities and creativity. He got a lot of flak for not being able to quantify
(or even define, without oodles of addenda and exceptions) "creativity";
however, he made a damned good case that such things *seem* to be correlated,
and may be much more quantifiable in the future. Some very smart people are
working on this messy psychological stuff, and many of them really understand
statistics, how not to lie with them, and what constitutes "measureability" in
such cases.

  I'd be willing to bet that at this time ETS can't test (in any convincing way)
for "creativity". Probably the same for "empathy", or any of a multitude of
floppily-defined things. It seems to me that those sorts of qualities which
would (to my mind) require a kind of Turing test are exactly what ETS would fall
down on.

            --C.O.

/************************************
Down with categorical imperative!
flutzpah@yahoo.com
************************************/




________________________________
From: Brian Whatcott
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 10:59:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] What's the point of teaching to the test when it's graded
inaccurately?

Hehe... In certain quarters reading of a physicist calling another
entity arrogant
might elicit kettle..pot comments.
So as an assuredly humble, non-arrogant type myself    :-)    let me act as
Devil's Advocate:
What personal quality that is in some way observable, can you cite,
that I cannot in turn,  conceptualize a test for?

Quist, Oren wrote:
The ETS has a certain arrogance about them that I have never liked.  They
claim to be able to test for anything.  If there is something you would like to
determine about someone (or a group), they can come up with a test to find out
for sure whether they know it or not.  I don't think this can be done for many
things!

Oren Q.
 

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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
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