Sunday, June 11, 2006

Wife mentioned yesterday a possible career shift for me to teach history. It'd be fun, but I'm sitll not sure students should have to suffer for my career dissatisfaction. While I was making a bit of a drive by myself today (well, me and the cast of the Buffy musical episode), I started thinking how I would want to set up the class. I don't know anything about teaching, so can't predict that aspect. But I got to thinking about evaluation, testing, and grades, and that got me going. Maybe a lot of programming is just evaluating and grading bits of data.

My ideal test would be 70% straight out of the book, in some combination of multiple-choice, short answer, and essay. 10% would be similar straight out of the book, but from previous units - these might be selected to highlight previous topics relevant to the current material, or just random to ensure some retention. 10% would be from my lectures/classroom activities, which I hope would add information and value beyond the textbook. Probably all multiple-choice, maybe one short answer. The final 10% would be one essay or two short answer that requires analysis of the material and comparison to current events or trends from previous material. This way, they can pass by just studying the textbook, can get an A by only retaining material, but would need to go a step farther for the final points. Would probably add in 2-5 points extra credit to make this more palatable. Also my questions wouldn't be too picky unless they needed it for standardized tests and such. For example, knowing the Civil War started in 1861 at Fort Sumter is good. Knowing the date it happened on seems a bit much, but I might include it in the question in case they associate it (I do that on trivia questions a lot).

Yep, these are my thoughts. Everyone congratulate your inner babbler for not being so effectlessly, randomly thorough.
posted by Unknown 8:26 PM | 0 comments