Not quite burned, but certainly on fire. After grading most of the exam, it has become clear that things certainly did not go well. Simple questions missed by close to half the students who clearly should have, and likely did, know the answer to (what is the name for H2O) indicate a significant level of stress during the test. Once finished and returned to the students, conversations need to be had about the exam and the reasons for poor performance and high stress levels.
Initial thoughts – too many questions in an effort to make questions worth less so as to reduce the penalty, gradewise, for missed questions resulting in not enough time to spend on all the questions because of time mismanagement.
When exams go badly (not as planned or expected), how do you decide the source of the problem, so as to address it and not create other problems in it’s place. Did the students do poorly because I did a bad job teaching them, or because they did not study enough in preparing for it, or because the test was more difficult than it should have been or because the exam was long or unclear or confusing?
It would be nice to have the luxury of several plausible explanations with testable hypotheses.
Chemistry with Dr. Mark 