AY 300 Fall 09: Sixth day plan

• Choose partners for peer visitation
• Check teaching logs
• Address fact that all that's really left is exams, review sessions & midterm evals. After that we will finish up a few projects and be done.

• Ask any or all of the following:
  • How did section go?
  • What did you do?
  • What didn't work?
  • What would you have changed?
  • Any cool/interesting/sad stories?
• Get people who haven't talked about their section yet in 300 to speak briefly on the above questions.
• Keep track of who speaks.

• Which techniques have you tried?
  • Have you had success with them?
• Which techniques would you consider trying in the future? Why?
• Collect written responses at the end of the discussion

• Much of this is on the handout we distributed last week (so we won't belabor the points – most of the time should be spend critiquing exam questions).
• Exams exist to:
  • Evaluate student learning for University-required grading
  • Motivate students to study and understand the material
  • Allow the instructor to evaluate his/her progress educating students about the material
  • Provide feedback to students about their understanding and study habits and illustrate specific gaps in their understanding of the material

• What makes good multiple choice exam questions?
  • Not too long/wordy (neither the question nor the possible answers)
  • Not too much calculation
  • Not too tricky (i.e. there shouldn't be two extremely similar answers)
  • Relevant to important material (as opposed to really obscure/minute details)
  • Very clearly written, precise wording in both question and answers
    • E.g., 'Which best describes…' as opposed to 'What is…' or 'How does…happen'
  • Pedagogical as well as evaluative (e.g., some questions should probe common misconceptions)
  • Questions that are very easy or very difficult are OK as long as the test has questions with a variety of difficulties

• What makes bad ones?
  • Long answers!
  • Excessive use of 'all of the above' (some people say any use of 'all/none of the above' is a bad thing)
  • Questions that can be solved without knowledge of the material (usually because of the use of too many blatantly wrong or “funny” possible answers)
  • Multiple potentially correct answers (usually from vague questions or possible answers)

• Non-multiple choice questions (very similar to quizzes)
  • Types of questions:
    • Matching
    • Fill-in-the-table/blank
    • Simple calculations
    • Short answers and paragraph/free responses
    • Diagrams, plots, graphs
  • Most of the same points discussed above, and for quizzes, apply here:
    • Questions should be clear, easy to read, and unambiguous
    • Questions should be relevant to the material presented and emphasized (do not test on obscure passages of the textbook)
    • For high-value questions, allow for partial credit
    • Make the questions easy to grade! Don't give students the opportunity to 'core-dump' for a problem: be very specific about what you're looking for in free response type questions.
  • Can be be slightly more time-consuming than quiz questions, depending on the overall length of the exam.

• Break into groups of three
• Distribute anonymized exam questions
• Critique some of the questions
  • Note that evaluating others' exam questions is equally or more important as knowing how to write them, since GSIs almost always vet exams but only contribute a few questions at most.
• Ask them to evaluate question stem and distractors.
  • Stem - Is this clearly worded? Does it concern a “major topic”?
  • Distractors - Are these worth the words they're written with? Capture common misconceptions? Clearly worded?
  • Think about where students may get tripped up, if anywhere.
  • How can they be improved?
• Discuss with entire class

• Now critique some past exam questions
• Use old Alex/“proven to be good” questions
  • Have the practice final from the 2007 AY C10 reader
  • Have some MC questions from the back of Slater & Addams.
  • LSCI questions: http://aer.noao.edu/auth/LSCIspring2006.pdf
  • ADT 2.0: http://solar.physics.montana.edu/aae/adt/
  • More concept inventories: http://astronomy101.jpl.nasa.gov/tips/index.cfm?teachingID=32 . (Most of these don't publicize the questions online; you have to email the author to get them.)
• Assign each group three questions from each source to critique
  1. Notice flaws & strengths of each question.
  2. Discuss ways to improve questions.
  3. Any common threads among questions from same source.
• Discuss with entire class

• Don't tailor to actual exam questions or drop hints about what's specifically covered. This is essentially cheating because it gives certain students (those in your section or those who went to the session) an unfair advantage. (Hopefully your students are getting a fair advantage by going to a review session though…)
• In-Section Review Sessions
  • Most GSIs will hold a review for students in the Section before the exam.
  • Four (of many) ways to go about it:
    1. Standard review session
       • Prepare a quick review of major topics beforehand, then take questions
       • Upside - can be very useful for some students for the topics you cover
       • Downside - intro astro is so broad it's impossible to summarize everything for even a midterm in 50 mins
       • Downside - the general review session (which we'll discuss in a minute) is basically the same thing
    2. Play a game
       • Astro Jeopardy is a favorite
       • Upside - students (and many GSIs) love it
       • Downside - kind of immature
       • There are many versions with different sets of rules that have been used in Ay 10 sections
         • How many teams?
         • How to choose teams?
         • Which group answers a question and are there 'steals'?
         • In a group, who answers a question and how is that decided?
       • The EBRB page on reviews has a few sets of Jeopardy review questions, but feel free to come up with your own!
    3. Student review sheets
       • Handout a worksheet or a handout that lists or summarizes the topics that could be covered on the exam.
       • Possibly have students work in groups to summarize each topic on the board or fill-in-the-blanks on a worksheet
       • If each group only reviews a certain topic, be sure to have plenty of time at the end of section to discuss them all or as the GSI you should write it all down and send it to the students
       • Upside - interactive, puts responsibility in student's hands
       • Downside - they're often not prepared to make it any good, so you have to do tons of editing and correcting both during section and afterward
       • The EBRB page on reviews has a couple full semester reviews that could be broken up for each midterm, but again, feel free to make your own and possibly make it more interactive!
    4. No review session - cover only the most recent material (i.e. run a normal section)
  • Do whatever works for you!
  • Do whatever you think will help your students most!
• General review session for anyone in the course
  • Usually run by 2 GSIs
  • Typically held during the week or so before an exam (possibly in place of TALC for that week)
  • No need to prepare anything specific (at Ay 10 level) since it's mostly Q&A, but you could try to predict where people might have questions and possibly prepare a short lecture on some of the major topics.
  • Going in to the review session you should know:
    1. The time and place of the exam
    2. What chapters/lectures/topics are covered (which will dictate what mini-lectures you might prepare)
    3. What students need to bring (i.e. calculator, pen/pencil, blue book and/or scantron)
  • Students always ask these kinds of questions at review sessions no matter how many times you might give them the answers in lecture or section or syllabi.
  • Stay focused - you'll often be drowning in questions. Defer overly complicated questions (to email or office hours) and focus on topics that they really need to know for the exam.
  • All the lecture tips apply here.
  • Especially if the review session is in a bigger room than you're used to, speak loudly! And hope your voice doesn't give out.
  • One possible strategy:
    1. Collect all the questions at the beginning of the session and write them on the board
    2. Go through them in your own order, probably alternating with the other GSI. (This gives you more time to think about what you're going talking about and to divvy up who can best answer which question. It also allows you to combine similar questions since students probably won't realize how related certain questions are to each other.)

• Choose a few (as many as time allows) students to hold a mock review session:
  • One at a time, have a chosen student come to the board.
  • Take a question or few from the audience on any Ay 10 topic that has covered thus far.
  • The student will spend 3-4 minutes answering the question(s).
  • Get a few comments/suggestions from the audience and instructors on their review session style.

• Visit a peer (or two) in the next two weeks

As always, spend a few minutes exchanging ideas for what to do for your next section.