Category Archives: grading

Some thoughts on Document Assignments

In no particular order:

  • Be careful about using the language of historical documents.
    • Careful paraphrasing makes it clear that you understand the material in a way that shallow paraphrasing does not.
    • Be careful not to copy the bad habits, slurs and errors of your sources: e.g. “papist”
  • The textbook is an excellent source of historical context, both prior background and responses. You shouldn’t be guessing until you’ve at least examined what the book has to say.
    • However, you also need to show me that you’ve read the document, not just the textbook, by engaging it in some detail.
  • Two points on writing and structure:
    • As I said before, the questions in the assignment sheet are guidance, and if they’re not relevant or you don’t understand them, don’t try to answer them.
    • Take a minute or two after writing to think about whether you’ve got the material in the right sections. Don’t shift things around to make the sections look balanced: put the relevant material where I am supposed to find it.

Finally, I’m only getting document assignments from about half of you. Why? It’s not really that hard of an assignment: read something, summarize it, read the textbook to see where it fits in the history, and think about it a little. I’m not saying that doing it well is easy, but at least do it: these documents will show up on tests, and will also be required for the final exam take-home essays. If you’ve been reading them all along, you’ll have a much better sense of what it all means at the end.

Test 2 and Doc Assignment 2 Grades

On the Bill of Rights assignment, I gave grades and plus grades (A+, A, B+, B, etc.) Here’s how the grade scale worked out, approximately:

Grade Level distribution
A 10%
B 15%
C 28%
D 25%
F 22%

On the test, I gave plus and minus grades (A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc) which translate into a 100 point scale in my gradebook (100, 96, 92, 88, 85, 82, etc., down to 58, 55, 50 for F-level). The high score in the class was 49 out of a possible 49, not counting extra credit, so for mercy’s sake I used 48 as the 100% mark (if you’re not sure whether that helped you, just double your raw score to get your percentage score before the adjustment). The median score was roughly C-, meaning that about as many people got above a C- or above as a C- or below; the average score was a solid C- as well. The extra credit was worth up to 5⅔ points (thanks to my error): About quarter of the people who attempted extra credit got no benefit (mostly people in F-range); about a quarter went up one grade level (B to B+, etc.), about a quarter went up two grade levels (B- to B+, etc.), and about a sixth went up three grade levels (C+ to B+, etc.; One person hit the sweet spot, and actually went up four (e.g. C to B+). Here’s how the grade scale worked out:

Grade minimum points distribution
A+ 48
A 45.5 15%
A- 43
B+ 41⅓
B 39⅔ 20%
B- 38
C+ 36⅓
C 34⅔ 20%
C- 33
D+ 31⅓
D 29⅔ 12%
D- 28
F+ 26
F Below 26 33%

This is a better result than last time, but still disappointing at the low end. I’m open to suggestions as to more effective ways to review material, study methods, etc.

My mistake….

Question 31 on the test was wrong:

31.  Nicolaus Copernicus

a. solved the problem of longitude
b. established a secret society of atheists
c. believed Jesus Christ to be of African ancestry
d. believed in a geocentric solar system

Unfortunately, none of these answers are correct. Answer (d) should say “believed in a heliocentric solar system” and none of the other answers are even close (though I can understand associating an astronomer and mathematician with the Longitude problem, especially if you actually realized that (d) was wrong). Most of you – almost 2/3rds – picked (d) anyway; only two people picked (d) and corrected the error. Most of the rest of you picked (a), though about 1 in 7 picked (b) or (c).

So, what does a teacher do when the question is wrong? First, apologize. My mistake, sorry. I guess there’s one advantage to using a test bank that I hadn’t considered (but I’m not going to stop making up questions myself because that way you’re actually tested on the material I taught). Then, adjust the test.

In this case, I’m inclined to just discount the question entirely, make it a 49-question test. Those two people who actually got the question right will get a point added to their extra credit. People who answered (d) will get 2/3rds of a point extra credit; people who answered (a) will get 1/3rd of a point extra credit. (I’m giving 1/3rd of a point for each country correct on the extra credit map, up to 15 countries. There are 30-odd countries in North, South and Central America plus Carribean.)

The rest of the grading will happen over the weekend.Tune in Monday for results!

Note: As before, I don’t like having you hand in a document assignment when I haven’t given you the previous one back, so I’m pushing the “French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen” assignment back to Wednesday the 9th.

Test 1 and Doc Assignment 1 Grades

On the document assignment, I gave grades and plus grades (A+, A, B+, B, etc.) Here’s how the grade scale worked out, approximately:

Grade Level distribution
A 5%
B 25%
C 20%
D 35%
F 15%

On the test, I gave plus and minus grades (A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc) which translate into a 100 point scale in my gradebook (100, 96, 92, 88, 85, 82, etc., down to 58, 55, 50 for F-level). The high score in the class was 47.8 out of a possible 50, not counting extra credit, so for simplicity sake I used 47.5 as the 100% mark (if you’re not sure whether that helped you, just double your raw score to get your percentage score before the adjustment). The median score was on the D/D+ border meaning that about as many people got above a D+ or above as a D or below; the average score was on the D+/C- border. The extra credit was worth up to 3 points: About half of the people who attempted extra credit went up one grade level (B to B+, etc.) and about a third went up two grade levels (B- to B+, etc.). Here’s how the grade scale worked out:

Grade minimum points distribution
A+ 47.5
A 44.5 12%
A- 42.75
B+ 41.2
B 39.5 12%
B- 38
C+ 36.5
C 34.75 24%
C- 33.25
D+ 31.75
D 30 24%
D- 28.5
F+ 27
F 23.75 28%
F- Below 23.75

Obviously, this is a somewhat disappointing result, but it’s only the first test of five, so those of you struggling with this one will have lots of chances to improve your overall grade.

Reminder: Test Review Assignment Due Midnight, Tuesday

As the syllabus says, your review assignment, which must be emailed to me no later than Tuesday midnight, is at least five multiple choice questions – based on the study guide terms – for each chapter covered in that section of the course. There are three chapters in this section – 15, 16 and 17 – so you need to do at least (I’m always happy to have more, if you want to do more) fifteen questions.

The questions should be multiple choice, though if you want to throw in a true/false or fill-in-the-blank now and then, that’s OK, but only a couple. You should clearly mark which chapter the question comes from, and indicate which answer you intend to be the correct one. If it’s not obvious which study term the question is based on, make sure you tell me that, too. The answers can and should be based on both the textbook, readings (de Busbeq is fair game), and lectures including powerpoints and resources.

The questions shouldn’t be about trivia: I don’t care about the precise date of Columbus’ voyage, or Zheng He’s religion as much as I care about what they did and why it matters. Don’t copy the language of the textbook or a powerpoint and expect students to remember the exact words used: the significance of events and people is about the connections and changes they were part of. For a brief tutorial on using multiple choice questions to test more advanced learning, read this overview of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning by a professor at the Other PSU

Multiple choice questions are tricky. The traditional question has:  one clearly right answer, one clearly wrong answer (if you know the material), and two answers that are appear possibly right but which are actually clearly wrong.  My problem writing questions is that I tend to assume that people know too much, so my ‘wrong’ answers are sometimes too close to actually correct. You may also use “all of the above” – including an item which looks wrong but is actually true makes it a challenging question – or “none of the above” as options, if you’re inspired.

I will make a selection of your questions available for review and may use, or modify, your questions on the test itself.

The 50-minute test will consist of 50 multiple choice (or other) questions. “Other” may include a short definition or two, as well as true/false, fill-in-the-blank questions. There may be extra credit opportunities: they will be clearly marked.

Book Review Results

The median score was a C+ meaning that about as many people got above a C+ or above as a C+ or below; the average score was a C. Here’s how the grade scale worked out:

Grade Level distribution
A 5%
B 20%
C 55%
D 10%
F 10%

Update: After a quick look at the final I can say that the most popular question was #5 (WWI/Long 19th Century), followed closely by #2 (French Revolution Effects) and #3 (Industrial Revolution in Asia/Africa). The other questions were pretty evenly distributed, except for the very unpopular #1 (China’s Role).

Test 3 Results

The most popular terms were 9/11, Holocaust, Great Depression and Cuban Missile Crisis; this really is a depressing section of the course! The high score in the class was 36 out of a possible 40, not counting extra credit, which made calculating the grades much easier for me. The median score was a B- meaning that about as many people got above a B- or above as a B- or below. There was a very even distribution across the B and C grades. Here’s how the grade scale worked out:

Grade minimum points distribution
A+ 36
A 34 11%
A- 32.4
B+ 29.4
B 26.4 43%
B- 23.4
C+ 20.4
C 17.4 38%
C- 14.4
D+ 11.4
D 8.4 8%
D- 5.4
F 0 0%

As you can see, nobody who took the test failed, and the average was noticeably higher than previous tests, even though the top score was a little higher than last time: most people did better than previously, or held steady.

Extra Credit Questions, or, Why I Don’t Do Multiple Choice On Tests

When I started grading the extra credit questions – my warmup to grading the test – I noticed that what I thought were ‘gimme’ questions had in fact produced a wide array of what I thought were incorrect answers. On reconsideration, and after consulting with some bemused colleagues, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of my questions was poorly constructed such that the correct answer was only obvious to me; on this question, anyone who answered anything gets half-credit, and anyone who answered correctly gets full credit. On the other question I’m holding the line, though, because nobody has given me a convincing argument that my options were prone to misinterpretation or “correct from a certain perspective” such that I should be lenient; only the correct answer will earn full credit.

Here are the questions:

Extra Credit Questions (Circle your answers below)

  1. Why was Japan an ally of Germany and Italy in World War Two?
    a. natural tactical and strategic advantages
    b. shared anti-communist, nationalist ideals
    c. “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”
    d. all of the above
  2. Why was the Soviet Union (USSR) an ally of the US and UK in World War Two?
    a. personal goodwill between leaders
    b. shared progressive, internationalist ideals
    c. “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”
    d. all of the above

The intended correct answers are (b) for question 1 and (c) for question 2.

On question 1, the defining characteristics of the Anti-comintern/Axis alliance are a shared committment to nationalism, imperialist expansion, totalitarian anti-democracy, and a violent antipathy to communism and socialism. The alliance forms after all three leave the League of Nations over their respective expansions. There’s little tactical advantage to the alliance – with the exception of the Soviet Union, and arguably the US, Japan and Germany had few common enemies, and they never coordinated their military strategies. Nonetheless, I can see where (c) is an easy mistake, and I can also see where people might think that there could be tactical or strategic components to the alliance. The most common answer given on this question – by a huge margin – was (d). I will accept (a), (c) and (d) for half-credit, and (b) will get full credit.

On question 2, the only historically acceptable answer is (c). Nobody liked Joseph Stalin personally; even when FDR and Churchill (and Truman) acknowledged his importance as an ally, they didn’t trust him any farther than they could throw him. Though the USSR might be described as ‘internationalist’, the US and UK had waged an open struggle against the spread of communist ideas and governments in the two decades following the Russian Revolution, and the USSR did not support the League of Nations or the Wilsonian movement it represented. In the absence of goodwill and shared ideals, (a), (b) and (d) are clearly incorrect answers. (C) answers get full credit. There was an almost exactly even distribution of answers: (b), (c) and (d) each got about 1/3rd of the responses; fortunately, only one person answered (a).

Oh, well. Nobody got a full 2 points extra credit, but everyone who attempted the questions got at least a half point. And this is why I don’t like multiple choice questions: it’s hard to design ones that are fair, historically interesting, and test understanding.

Final Exam Essays (Hist 102, Fall 2010) Due Friday, 12/17, 10am

Final Exam Essays Due Friday, 12/17

To my office (RH 406F) no later than 10am

The test will consist of two essays, equal in value, which you will choose from the following list:

  1. Describe China’s role in global economic history over the last five hundred years. This is not a history of China, but a discussion of how China has interacted with and influenced other countries and regions. There will be periods of greater and lesser influence, of course, and some domestic Chinese history will be necessary for clarity.
  2. What were the long-term effects of the French Revolution? Don’t do a history of the event, but look at the ways in which it affects French, European and World history over the following two centuries.
  3. How did the Industrial Revolution affect Asia and Africa differently? Why?
  4. Locke and Hobbes had very different ideas about the role of government and the rights of the individual. How have those ideas influenced political history over the last 300 years, and which of these thinkers is closest to our present-day ideas about rights and government? (globally, not just the United States) This will require describing their ideas, but your focus should be on the way their ideas are used over time.
  5. Why is World War One considered the end of the “long 19th century”? What changes happen during and because of the war, and are they sufficiently important to justify making WWI a dividing line between historical epochs?
  6. Write a history of agriculture from 1500 to present focusing on its economic role. This is not a general history of farming, but a specific analysis of the role of agriculture in the world economy. Issues to consider include: the percentage of farmers in the population; the flow of migration from rural regions; the Columbian Exchange; differences between regions of the world; changes in technology, fertilizers and crops; general lifestyle changes.
  7. Describe the world economy around 1700. Include trade, flows of silver and gold, the role of agriculture, major exporters and the state of technology. How are things changing?

Both Essays are due Friday, 12/17, 10am

There will be no extensions or late papers accepted

except in cases of documented medical emergency.

Instructions

  • This test covers the entire semester: textbooks, documents, and lectures.
    • This is a take-home assignment, so I am expecting two real essays, with introductions, thesis statements, paragraphs, conclusions, etc.
    • Don’t assume that “an answer” will be easily found in one section of one book. These essays require broad knowledge and analytical thinking.
    • Be concrete: evidence is always more convincing than generalization or simple logic.
  • You may think of it as two essays each worth 10% of your course grade; that’s certainly how I calculate it.
    • The grade is based primarily on the strength of your argument as an answer to the question: thesis, evidence (completeness and handling), logic.
    • Polished prose is not required, but basic courtesies like correct spelling and writing in grammatical standard English will be expected.
    • Clarity is crucial; structure is essential to a clear and effective argument.
  • Citations and Plagiarism
    • failure to acknowledge the source of your ideas or information is unacceptable. Plagiarism will result in no credit for the exam. Poor paraphrasing and poor citation will be penalized.
    • A Works Cited or Bibliography page is not required unless you use sources outside of the course readings and lectures. You must cite the source of information and ideas that are outside of “general knowledge,” including information from your course texts. Format of the notes is up to you: I prefer footnotes for my research, but parenthetical citations are fine as well; any format will be fine as long as it is used consistently and it clearly identifies the source and page of your information.
    • These questions can be answered more than adequately with reference to assigned readings and lectures. You are welcome to do more research and include outside sources if necessary, but you must be sure that they are relevant and of sufficient quality to enhance your argument.
    • Using outside sources instead of course materials will result in penalties.
  • Technical Details
    • Make sure that your name, section, e-mail address and the question are clearly indicated at the beginning of each essay, and that each essay begins on a fresh page. Title pages are not required.
    • There is neither a minimum nor a maximum length for these essays, but any answer less than 1000 words or more than 2500 is probably missing the point.
    • Double-spacing and title pages are not required, but readable type and font are.
    • Both Essays are due in my office (or mailbox, if you’re handing it in early) no later than 10am Friday. There will be no extensions or late papers accepted except in cases of documented medical emergency. Emailed files will only be accepted as proof of completion; printed essays must be delivered no later than 2pm Friday, and must be identical to the emailed files.

Test 2 Results

The most popular terms were Lincoln, Napoleon, Newton and the Declaration of Independence. The high score in the class was 35.5 out of a possible 40, not counting extra credit — a bit weaker than the first test. The median and modal score was a C, meaning that C was the most common grade and that about as many people got above a C as below. Here’s how the grade scale worked out:

Grade minimum points distribution
A+ 35.5
A 33.5 8%
A- 32
B+ 29
B 26.125 19%
B- 23.125
C+ 20.125
C 17.25 52%
C- 14.25
D+ 11.25
D 8.375 17%
D- 5.375
F 0 4%

It seemed to me that a lot more answers were ‘by the book’ rather than taking account of the connections and context that should come from the lectures. It also seemed the average answers were a lot shorter, which  means less definition, less context, less clarity.

Markings: When looking at your papers, you can ignore the little diagonal I put in the upper-left and lower-right corners of pages: that’s a note to me that there’s nothing before or after (respectively) that page which isn’t graded (just keeps me from having to flip more pages than necessary). If I underlined or circled something in one of your answers, though, it almost certainly means something you got wrong. “X” always marks an error. If I put an “approximately” sign in the margin (and I do this on essays, too) — it looks like this: ≈ — that means something which is almost right, or nearly wrong; questionable, in other words.