Oh, well. We'll try this again on Monday.

The BBQ Pit
1

The exam’s today. It says so right on the syllabus.

It’s getting towards the end of the quarter. My students are jumpy. I’m jumpy. Everyone’s nervous and upset. They’ve got midterms. They’ve got papers. They’ve got exams. I’ve got papers, a sinus infection and virus I just can’t seem to kick, and what’s getting to be a serious case of burnout.

So, okay. Their exam is today. That’s good for everyone. The students’ will have their test over with, they’ll be relaxed, and I won’t be dealing with hyper, grade-obsessed pre-med anxiety yipping for at least several days. Yeah, I’ll have a weekend packed with grading, but I can get that over with soon enough. And then everyone can relax. Just a little.

But, no.

And why not, you ask?

Well, we have, IIRC, 600 people in this course. That means we need at least 600 copies of the exam. And, really, we should have a few more, just in case. But, somehow, when we went to give out the exams today…hey! Look at that! We have about 300 copies! So where are the other 300 copies? Whoops! Oh, well. They’re gone!

And no-one knows where they are. No-one knows if they got shipped to the right department or to the right person within the department. Or if they got made at all. Of course, this problem isn’t actually anyone’s fault. No-one messed up a copy order. Heavens, no!

There must be some other explanation. Like, maybe half of the exams decided they were sick of Ohio in winter. So they shipped themselves off to Florida or Hawaii. Maybe they sprung for international shipping and are now basking their blue (version 1) and white (version 2) selves on the Mayan Riviera. Perhaps they were suffering from test anxiety and decided to end it all, hurling themselves into the shredder. Now they’re in that Great Circular File in the Sky.

In any case, minutes after handing out the scantrons, we had to tell students to turn them back in and go home. The professor’s rewriting the exam, so that students who’d seen the test aren’t at an unfair advantage. We’re having the test on Monday.

Of course, I’m not anticipating a weekend’s worth of panicky e-mails from students. Nor am I anticipating lots of angry “this course SUCKS, and so do YOU! You owe me!!!” e-mails from any of the 52 students for whom I am the only teacher they really interact with on a regular basis. And my Monday morning lab/recitation section’s gonna be a breeze, what with all the relaxed, contented pre-meds there.

To the person who messed this up: --> :wally

2

Eek. You have my sympathies.

I’d bet on “messed up copy order” as the source of the malfunction, myself. A nice, simple mistake which probably can’t be tracked down to any one person but nevertheless screws everybody’s pooch.

I feel lucky I don’t have to deal with class sizes that large in my current job. Even with 120 students I can still just photocopy the stupid exams myself, so even if something does go wrong I know whose fault it is (i.e., mine).

3

It was probably a Michigan graduate.

4

Wait. It gets better.

I went to my weekly TA meeting today, which was several hours after the “oh-whoops-we-have-no-exams” fiasco. It turns out that we might be able to have the exam on Monday, but we might not, if the professor doesn’t do the rewrite in time for the copy place to give us the copies we need.

So–get this–I’m supposed to e-mail all my students and tell them that there might be an exam on Monday, but we might not have it until their next lecture session, which is Wednesday. And, of course, guess who’s gonna recieve all the student love as a result of this utterly boneheaded decision? That’s right–me. Their TA. The professor, the course coordinator, the administration people–none of them is going to hear a word of student outrage. Just us, the front-line peons.

Oh, man.

5

Is there a reason why the professor can’t just go to Kinko’s on the weekend and get reimbursed by the department afterwards? Or is that too simple?

6

I read the OP as saying they’d been handing out tests when they realized they were short by half. So half the students have already seen the test and know what’s on it, and the professor has to rewrite the whole thing.

7

Yes, I got that. I was referring to the new test. Scribble suggested that the professor may not get the new test completed in time to get it to the copy place. I’m guessing “the copy place” is the university graphics services office, which would probably only be open during 9-5 business hours…hence the concern about getting the new exam finished in time. What I’m wondering is whether or not the professor could take some responsibility for the situation and get the new exams printed at an off-campus copy shop over the weekend.

Sadly, the answer probably is “because the university has no policy in place for reimbursing the professor for the cost of 600 new exams, or indeed any policy for paying for exams from anywhere other than their own graphics services office”. Still, there’s always hope that some common sense might prevail.

8

Doesn’t your school have copying machines for student use? Why didn’t you just run out and make 300 copies on the spot? It shouldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes.

9

No way.

First off, I’m a TA, one of several (like, 12 or so, IIRC) in this course. I have to be with my students so that I can answer their questions and do whatever else was necessary during the exam (I have 2 sections of 26 people apiece.) There’s no way I could leave the lecture hall when stuff like this happens. If TAs just sort of took off to go do other things–even useful things–we’d have chaos.

Second–yeah, it seems like making 300 copies of a test booklet would take a mere 10 minutes. Only, when you take into account getting to the copy machine, actually making the copies, making sure the copies come out right, carrying back the copies, etc.–that time adds up. Then there’s distributing the copies, making sure that each student gets exactly one copy of the exam. We’re talking half an hour, minimum, to fix the test shortage problem. We’d already spent something like 10 minutes distributing what copies we had and rushing around looking for the other copies that magically didn’t exist. There are 48 minutes total in the lecture period. So no way we could have done this. And if we’d tried it, the students who’d gotten a copy of the exam at the beginning of the period would have had a serious advantage over students who didn’t get their tests on time. Grading fairly would have been impossible.

Third–I’m not spending my own time, effort, or money making my own copies. Each page that I’d copy would cost me 10 cents, minimum, if I pay by money on my student ID. If I pay in cash, that cost jumps to .25 per copy. Each test booklet is 4 pages long, front and back. So we're talking at least 40 cents per student. .40 x 300 = $120.00. And there’s no guarantee I’d get reimbursed, since I wouldn’t have had prior approval for the expenditure. I’m not the one who messed this up. I’m not paying to fix it.

10

OK. I hadn’t realized we were talking about booklets - I assumed it was a single page of essay question. I can see how the logistics would be impossible.

Incidentally - 10 cents!? Wow. My school sells “smart” cards good for 200 copies for 18 shekels, including a 12 shekel deposit. That’s roughly $4, or 2 cents a copy.

11

CC the prof and the coordinator and whoever else on the email you send to the students. Either the students will ‘reply all’ or you should forward any complaints to those responsible. There is no way that you should take any flack for this.

12

I checked the course website on Friday night. The prof herself apologized for the error, which was very nice of her, especially because she probably wasn’t responsible for the screw-up. She also announced that the test will be held on Monday. That saves me from having to tell my students that the exam might be tomorrow (i.e., Monday), but it might be on Wednesday.

And, so far, I haven’t gotten a single angry e-mail–or any e-mail, for that matter–from a student.

It looks like this might come out OK after all.

13

Good God am I glad I go to a college with small class sizes. I’ve never taken a class with more than 30 students in it. That sounds nightmarish - both to learn from and to teach.

14

Hey Scribble, I’m glad it sounds like things are going to work out. Are you a TA at OSU? What department? I’m an undergrad (and soon to be grad) student there :slight_smile:

15

My blood ran cold when I got to the part where you say they’re . . . shudder pre-meds.

I’m glad that your professor is recovering as gracefully as possible from the mix-up. But out of 600 pre-meds, there have to be at least, say, a dozen who are having coronaries. I just hope that they’re not in your section. :wink:

16

Thanks. :slight_smile:

Yes, I am.

If I told you that, I’d become un-anonymous PDQ. Suffice it to say I’m in one of the biosciences.

I went to OSU as an undergrad, too. What department (or discipline) are you in?

17

Well, the only really huge courses we have are some of the high-demand 100-level courses. Intro bio, intro chem, and intro physics are the real biggies AFAIK. Each of those massive classes is divided up into lab and recitation sections, so students do often develop a more personalized relationship with their TA. In recitation sections, students get to ask questions and get more personalized help with the material.

I went through the cattle car intro bio and intro chem courses. I also had a pretty big lecture section–something like 200 people, if I remember right–for my first organic chem theory course. The intro chem course was pretty awful, but the others actually worked out OK. The big-lecture-with-a-small-recitation way of organizing a class isn’t as good as simply having small classes to start with, but it’s good enough for learning the basic material you need in your first year or so. The experience isn’t all that exciting most of the time, but it’s hardly nightmarish.

18

Ah, well just knowing biosciences is good enough for me. I was wondering if I’d ever had you as a teacher, but being an English major, I’ve kept away from science as well as I could! Though I did take Bio 113/114 over the last year… Hey, your name’s not Matt, is it?

19

I’dunno, but I was drivin’ by Daytona Beach and saw a few hundred blue and white forms hangin’ on the beach. Could be yours?

20

You know…you might really be cheating yourself if that’s the case. Biology is really pretty fascinating!

No, it’s not. But I may know the guy you had as an instructor. IIRC, there are a few people named “Matt” who taught intro bio courses in the last year or so.