Quizzes - Why does our class have them? How will it affect our grade?, etc.

[Zellmer, Robert]

I get questions all the time about why I give weekly quizzes and if it will hurt
your letter grade in the end because your friends' lecturers aren't giving
quizzes.  I've gotten a few questions this semester about it.  This is my 31st
year of teaching. Here's some reasons for having quizzes.

1)  Think of the quizzes as small midterms meant to prepare you for the real
deal.  Each quiz is worth a small fraction of your overall grade, just under
1% of your total.  Each quiz covers about 1 week's worth of material.  That's
not a lot.  However, it will tell you right now how well you know that material
and if you're maybe not approaching things properly.

2)  They're meant to make sure you don't fall too far behind.  You knew before
the first quiz you had be done with material up through 13.4.  For the second
quiz you knew you should have been prepared for 13.5-14.2.  Former students
and TAs (who were my former students) told me time after time the quizzes
prepared them better because they knew they had to be prepared by then.
They knew if they only had activities in recitation they didn't really have to be
prepared by recitation so they would fall behind.

You should be done with one lecture's material (reading the sections, doing
Sample Exercises, Practice Exercises, Self Review and EOC Exercises)
before the next lecture.  You should be done with the whole week's worth
of material by about Sunday, maybe Monday since we don't have class
until Tue.

The quiz covering that material is the next weekend, after you've done the
material and had a recitation where you could ask questions about it.  You
do the Mastering as a review for the quiz.  That's how it's set up.

If you fall behind in this course, you'll find yourself in trouble pretty quickly
and may not be able to catch up and recover.

3) There have been times questions from the quizzes appeared on the
midterms, or were very similar to questions on the midterm.  That means if
you've seen them already there's no reason to miss them on the midterm.
If you got them wrong on the quiz, fix them.  That's another purpose of
the quizzes.  They let you know now what you don't know so you can fix
it before the midterm.

If you really understand the material, you should be able to answer the
questions on the quizzes.  They're open book, but you don't have time
to really look things up, just like on the midterms.  You have to know
the material.

4)  When you study for the midterm, you'll have practice exams.  In our class
you also have the quizzes you can look back at.  Remember, I put a sample
quiz and the solutions to it on my personal class webpage at the "Quizzes"
link.  Print it out and take it when studying for the midterm, maybe before
you try the practice exams.

5)  There are quizzes the Sunday before the midterm.  Usually those
quizzes will have questions dealing with material on the midterm.  There
could be new material which isn't on the midterm depending on how
things work out with the schedule.

If the quiz is covering material which is on the midterm, as is the case
for quiz 3 and MT 1, you should already be prepared for that material
so the quiz shouldn't be a problem.  If you do struggle with it, then you
know you don't know the material as well as you need to and need
to look at it again.

6)  Students have asked where the questions come from because they
haven't seen any like them.  I saw someone state this on Reddit (oh,
you thought that was a secret).  Many of the questions come from
EOC exercises or are similar to them or Mastering questions.  They
don't have to be exactly like the EOC exercises.  College is about
understanding the material and being able to answer questions
pertaining to the material, even if they're not worded exactly like those
in the book or Mastering.  Besides, I'm trying to make some questions
that give partial credit so they're more like a paper quiz on which you
would get partial credit.

7)  If you think you were doing things correctly but still struggled on the
quiz it likely means you weren't studying effectively to really learn the
material.  If you didn't come to one of the "How to Study/Learn" sessions
or watched the recording on Carmen (Lecture module) I suggest you
watch the video.  Watch it and pay close attention to how I'm telling
you to approach learning in general and specifically for chemistry
and learn the material properly for long term retention.  Give it a try.
Even if you did fairly well on the quiz, it could still help you refine what
you're doing and cut down on the time you're spending.

If you really think you've been following my instructions and you're
still struggling and didn't do well on the quizzes we can make
arrangements to meet in some way.

8)  The questions on the quizzes have different point values.  That
means you probably want to pay has much attention to how many
questions you missed as you do to your score.  Maybe you got 30/40
but you missed only 2 questions out of 10 which were worth 5 pts
each.  Think of it this way, you only missed 2 out of 10.  That's only
2 you need to fix.  Although, that may not be the whole story. If you
guessed at any and got them right, you technically missed them.
Keep that in mind.

Again, each quiz is worth just less than 1% of your total course grade.
That's not much.  One bad quiz isn't the end of the world, as long as
you fix things and do well on the rest of the quizzes and course.  Of
course, if you don't fix things and you continue to struggle that will be
a problem.  Get problems fixed now.  Plus, remember we drop the
two lowest quiz scores.

9)  Why are they on Sunday evening?

I have them outside of recitation so you don't have to worry about
having your computer or iPad with you.  More importantly, it gives
you the whole 55-min recitation period to ask questions.

Why Sunday?  What other day would really be more convenient.
Monday-Thursday nights aren't good since people have classes.
Would Friday or Sat night be better?  I doubt it.  I found Sunday
night to have the fewest conflicts.  Plus, it gives you Fri and Sat
to do the Mastering as a review for the quiz.

10) Why only a 3-hour window?

When testing is done remotely the window available for taking the
quiz is supposed to be kept short. Technically, it shouldn't be much
longer than the quiz itself.  The longer the window, the more
incidences of academic misconduct.  We saw these problems
when we went to remote testing when the pandemic first hit.  I
saw it Autumn 2020 when I started giving quizzes via Carmen.

We saw this when we went remote after COVID first started in
Sp20.

11)  Why can't we move backward in the quiz?

The reason why it's one question at a time and you can't move
backward in the quizzes is to cut down on academic misconduct.
Allowing people to move backward when we went remote lead to
a lot of academic misconduct.  I won't go into details how we
knew this was occurring but we could tell.  Best practices state
to not allow this on remote testing.

If you can't figure out the answer to a question you can't spend a
really long time on it.  You need to take a guess and move on.
You have about 3-4 minutes per question on the quizzes.  You have
about 2.5 min per question on the midterms.  Write your work out
and check it once and if you get the same answer move on to the
next question.  You must have confidence in yourself when you
answer a question that you've done it correctly and move on.
Practice will give you that confidence.

Besides, missing one question isn't a big deal if it allows you to make
sure you can get to all of them and finish.  It's better to not get hung
up on one question and miss it so you can get to the rest of them
and maybe get all the rest correct.

12)  Exams are different.  Since they're in person you will be allowed
to move backward in the exam.  If you don't know how to answer a
question or get it the wrong answer (for multiple choice), move on
and go back.

Also, every question is worth 1 point.  Some people don't think that's
fair for hard questions to be worth the same as easy ones.  There's
an argument for that but then again if you miss a hard one it doesn't
cost you more points than missing an easy one.  It's also a lot more
work to give different point values to every question.

13) Don't talk to your friends in other lecture sections and take anything
away from what they tell you about their overall scores and averages
and compare it to ours.  They may not be doing things the way we
are.  Besides, what makes you think they know more about our class
than you do?  Lots of rumors get spread around, and they're just that,
rumors.

Everyone takes the same midterms.  However, all the classes are doing
slightly different things in Mastering and recitation.  Because of the
quizzes, our average in recitation may be lower than other sections.
The same likely applies to the Mastering as well, the averages between
lecture sections won't be the same but generally are very close.

However, this is the important part, this will be taken into consideration
when the grades are assigned at the end of the semester.  I won't go
into the details of how.  I'm just letting you know your final grade won't be
hurt because we have quizzes.  If anything, if you take the quizzes
seriously and use them for their intended purposes, they will help you in
the long run on the midterms and ultimately the whole course.

14) Taking quizzes can help for the exams which count a lot more than
the recitation score.  I analyzed data last spring and it clearly showed
a much better correlation of midterm scores to the quiz scores than
to Mastering.


I hope this helps explain the advantages of taking quizzes.  Treat it as a
learning experience to prepare you for the midterms and keep you on
track so you don't fall too far behind.  They really shouldn't be a problem
if you're doing things properly and not falling behind.  You should be
ready for them at the time they're given.

Dr. Zellmer
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