Some of this is practical: the proctor / invigilator is being paid to monitor the test, and that person does not have unlimited time. The monitoring is also partly practical (to be able to gather the exams in one place at one time) and partly because around issues of what is now being called “academic honesty,” i.e. cheating.
Plus, if you’ve ever given a timed test, you know that there is a fraction of the students that will always take the maximum time, whatever that time is. Final exams are usually 2, 2½, or 3 hours. I design exams that should take about 70–100 minutes. I always have a handful that write until the last second. I suspect the extra time is more psychological than physical or cognitive.
Fair enough, but you give everyone the amount of time that proctor is going to need to wait for those who have extra time.
Maybe not if they lose points over it.
I do think it would be an intersting metric. Now, it’s partly self serving, as I did well on the SAT’s back in the day, but I also finished very quickly, and I always thought that should have been some sort of extra credit, as it’s useful to know if someone can do something quickly.
At the same time, not being able to do math quickly doesn’t mean you can’t do math well, in some cases, better than those who do it faster. I knew people that were very good at math, until we got to complex subjects that they didn’t have the patience to learn, as it didn’t come as easily as simpler concepts, while the people who were slower at arithmetic and calculations just kept chugging at those concepts until they understood them.
I dunno, our education system is a mess, and there’s no single solution that will ever fix it.
I was always super fast, and truth be told, I was smug about it. But now, after 20+ years on the other side of the desk, it seems bizarre to me that we use really minor differences in speed to decide who is MIT material and who is NorthSouth State U material. We don’t bother to dostringuish the kid who can’t do it, and the kid who could do it if only he had 75 minutes instead of 65 on the reading section, or 30 minutes instead of 25 on the writing. I can’t believe that the slightly faster kid is really more prepared for college, which is what the test is testing for.
There are other tests where this is leas of a bug deal: AP Macro, time just isn’t an issue. If you know the material, you have plenty of time. If you don’t, no amountof time will help. But ACT (especially), SAT, and about half the AP exams really don’t differentiate between “don’t know” and “little slower”.
My major was ME, and I was quizzed on Ohm’s law during the interview for my current job. Was this engineering school accredited?
I had a professor in college who stopped the class in the middle of an exam because he realized that one of the questions, while relatively easy, couldn’t be completed in a reasonable amount of time because we were required to show ALL of our work.
Do I remember the thread you started IN THE PIT (not FQ) where you spread a bunch of hateful stereotypes about people with disabilities? Oh yeah, I sure do remember. Though I should think you’d want to forget about it, and not go brining it up a year and a half later in FQ of all places.
I guess you can have a master’s in something and still be a fucking bigot about it. Shocker.
All this time and you still can’t read for comprehension. Or do you intentionally misstate what people say?
For the record: what stereotype did I state about people with disabilities?
Oh that’s right, I met a few that used their disability as an intentional excuse to be a slapdick. Tell me I’m wrong and that NO person with a disability has ever done that. Everything else you think I said you made up in your head. I suspect intentionally so you could start a fight. You were a lying condescending asshole in this thread, you were a condescending asshole in the other thread when you had to teach poor stupid me what the 14th Amendment did. Seems like a pattern there.
Say anything you want now. You’re on ignore so I won’t see it.
I think it’s shitty to ask someone to identify a stereotype (or otherwise explain what they mean), and then put them on ignore so they can’t reply. So I will reply.
The title itself is a stereotype. It’s a common claim about people with disabilities. And several posters read your post as attacking them in general, not just one guy. There was, in fact a lot of discussion on that.
Yeah, the guy is being a jerk in this thread. But you Pitted him outside the Pit. Sure, maybe you found their post condescending, and you could say that. But Pitting outside the Pit tends to get a very heated response.
I see his response as being entirely in kind with yours. But he posted in the right forum, while I kinda have to report yours.
And if you wish to put me on ignore for saying this, well, I’d prefer you wouldn’t, but you do what you have to do.
For the record, I side on the idea that you weren’t trying to push any stereotypes, and were just frustrated about a particular person who then brought to mind a few other people.
I still think the thread could have hade a better title, though.
I won’t ignore you for that. I’m not ignoring him because of this thread and I will probably take him off ignore at some point in the future but I’m not going to deal with him this weekend. You said what I did was shitty. OK, that’s what the Pit is for and I don’t take that personally, but there is a difference between the recreational outrage to each other that is maybe 95%+ of our interactions here and what he has done in this thread to me.
And I know other people will think I overreacted in the other thread but I really don’t think I did. I think he meant his post to be as condescending as possible to me re: understanding the 14th Amendment and IMO the proof of that was not going into that thread and saying, “you misunderstood me” (and I’m not even asking him to be conciliatory about it). But instead comes back here and calls me an asshole again. My post to answer Little Nemo was that ASL has a history of outright vitriol against me. Again, not the “you’re an idiot, ha ha” stuff that normally we see here but downright burning hatred.
It was never intended for The Pit. I started it in MPSIMS so I was going for a title that flowed with that forum style.
I have plenty of students who claim mental health disabilities to get extra time or flexibility in test taking. All of them know how to work the system and have accommodation paperwork from the University disability office.
Are some of them faking and taking advantage of the system? Undoubtably. Probably most of them.
I don’t care, its none of my business. If they have the form I have to accommodate. If they want extra time or to take the test on a different day or take it at home have at it.
I realized years ago it’s better not to argue and not to make it difficult for them; that only comes back to bite me in the ass.
I’ve had to tell other teachers that an IEP has the power of federal law behind it. Accommodations under ADA are the same. My attitude is, “I can’t question how you got this accommodation. My job is to give it to you.” I tell teachers that have problems with that to look up Doe v Withers.
I tried hard to make any “alternate” final just as comprehensive as the one the rest of the students would take. In cases where it was the same test but in a different room or even at home, I let the whole class look things up (an “Open Book, Open Google” test).
So the final changed (for the better) from “See if you can remember these facts” to “Let’s see if you can figure out how to use those facts to trouble-shoot these scenarios”.
My major was ME, and I was quizzed on Ohm’s law during the interview for my current job. Was this engineering school accredited?