Re: OT: Everyone born after a certain date is ignorant and can be dismissed

In message <eati13$48o$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dr A. N. Walker <anw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <vBaE8ndcif0EFw$K@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Robert Henderson <philip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The whole point of exams is to examine the unaided efforts of a
student. It is pointless having an exam which has to be correlated with
the non-exam work of a student, [...].
I said "with the ability being assessed" not "with the
non-exam work". [...]
You are going round in circles. If the assessment is merely to be made
on the exam then were are back to where we began, ie, how to assess if
random scoring can score. RH

I didn't say "merely ... on the exam", I said "with the
ability being assessed". We don't need to keep doing it every
year with every student; we just need evidence [somehow or other]
of whether or not good historians [eg] systematically do better
than not-such-good historians on such-and-such test. If they do,
it's a good test; if they don't, it's bad. [And, FWIW, there is
not very much evidence that exams are good tests.]


You have to have an initial baseline. That can only come from work other than an exam. Moreover, the ability of a student is not static. Stop wriggling. You will do yourself an injury. RH

[...] It would also be nice if you
were able to recall evidence you were given previously, instead
of repeating nonsense again and again through thick and thin.
Translation: Still no evidence. RH

I rest my case. Proof by example.

Translation: still no evidence. RH


Your argument doesn't work. If an exam is too easy it will be passed by
too many with high scores. [...]
If it is too easy, then the pass mark will be raised, or
equivalently the scores will be scaled down; [...]
1. That is not what happens, vide the ever rising GCSE, A Level and
Degree grades.

It *is* what happens.

Your argument fails objectively. If many cluster around the top grade there is no literally means of sorting the sheep from the goats. RH

Whether it happens *enough* [or
too much] is a matter of debate. To contribute to that debate
in an informed way, you need to have looked at large numbers of
exams, scripts, and students at the various levels, and to have
correlated those levels with what is going on in other subjects,
in other countries, and in other parts of life [employment and
other indicators of ability]. Not many people have done that,
which makes their gripes mere uninformed witter.

Translation: The process must be obfuscated so we can pretend that standards have been maintained. RH

2. Raising the pass mark does not help you to
distinguish between everyone getting A* grades. RH

You don't need so to distinguish -- that's the point of
a grade. You might as well complain that we can't distinguish
between all the people who score 63. If you want to tell a
"good" 63 from a "bad" 63, you need finer discrimination, not
a harder exam.

That is precisely the problem with
UK exam grades today. RH
Which exam grades? Who are you accusing of incompetence?
Every grade at every level from GCSE upwards. It is not incompetence
but dishonesty driven by the commercialisation and politicisation of
education. RH

So you are now accusing me and every other academic, and
every GCSE/A-level examiner, of dishonesty? Never had much to do
with examining, have you?

You mark to the standard required. For example, GCSE and A Level boards give strict instructions to their markers. Markers are not free agents. RH

[...] Thus whatever
the pass mark is, random correct guesses may help them get it.
And random incorrect guesses help prevent that.
No they don't. Some one who does not know an answer in a non MC exam
cannot score. Someone in an MC exam who does not know the answer has a
chance of scoring. Rh

And a bigger chance -- 75% -- of losing a mark than of
gaining. Your beloved IQ tests are designed exactly this way.

You miss the point. They stand a chance of gaining in an MC, they hve no chance of gaining in a non MC exam. Dearie me, you chaps with claimed IQs of 160 can be rather obtuse. RH

It is
worth pointing out that most pass marks for exams in the UK are pretty
low, often 35% and in some cases less. RH.
No, it's not worth pointing that out, for you have still not
understood that a mark is a code, not an absolute. [...]
I would simply use the raw scores. I have never agreed with wide-spread
grading which blurs the judgement of ability. . RH

What do you think a coded mark is but the judgement of ability?

The span of marks covered by grades is too braod to be meaningful. RH

If you score 65% on a test, with no context, you have absolutely no
idea whether that is absolutely marvellous or utter rubbish.

The context of any exam is the exam. Next! RH

On an
essay question, there's no such thing as a "raw score";


By definition there is, a percentage mark given to a piece of work. RH

even to call
the mark "65%" is a code. The judgement of the essay is that it is
[eg] "middling upper second", and *therefore* it is coded at 65%. If
I decide that a raw mark of 72/100 represents the score that should
have been achieved on my exam by a "middling upper second" student,
then I will scale 72 to 65 before reporting it to elsewhere in the
University so that they will interpret the score correctly as a
reflexion of the examiner's judgement -- otherwise, everyone has to
ring me up and say "my tutee scored 72 on your exam, what does that
mean, please?".

If they are that thick they should not be teaching. RH

Translation: Bounded mind in a panic [...]

You might just as well have embarked on a doctor-nurse
fantasy.

Ye Gods! The question was whether examiners could be identified., They
can. RH

No it wasn't. This part of the thread started when in
<JA9dMqMUXaxEFwi$@anywhere.demon.co.uk> you wrote

" [...] Nonetheless, I'll
" bet that if you started giving low marks to many of the high fee paying
" foreign students you would be leant on. RH "

From which the question arose of whether examiners could be identified. RH


to which I replied in <ea5mbg$2sf$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

" As we have anonymous marking, it would be difficult, if not
" impossible, to single these out.

That was the first mention of anonymous marking, and it manifestly
[in both intention and a natural reading] refers to the students.
Everyone knows who the examiners are, starting with the lecturer(s)
who gave the module. In advanced work, the lecturer is often the
only person who *could* mark the exam.

Their pass mark is supposedly static these days because
there is no percentage to pass or fail as in the old days,
No, it's static because they are scaled to a "uniform
mark scheme".
Translation: Pass as many as possible to keep our revue strem up. RH

Stupid translation. If the pass mark is 40, then it's
static because it was 40 last year, this year and next year.
It may have been scaled from 37 last year, 42 this and 34 or
45 next, depending on how hard or easy the examiners determined
the exam to be.

Translation: Mark adjusted according to how poorly students performed. RH

Care to tell me how this differs from what has been done since the year
dot? RH

Not at all, but you didn't seem to understand the process.
Well, there is one change, in that there has been pressure to
harmonise the system and move to common standards,

Low standards. Rh

following the
discovery that different subject boards tended not to talk to
each other but to assume, wrongly. that "everyone is like us".

Random guessing does not affect the student's expected score,
so this has nothing to do with ability but with risk averseness.
"The expected score". Dontcha love it! That score being based on course
work which is worthless guide. . RH

No, being a probabilistic term. If a student is expected
to score 63% without random guessing,

That begs the question of how that expectation is reached. RH

then he is expected to score
63% with random guessing, whether or not he guesses on all or only
some of the questions he doesn't know the answer to. Whether that
63% is, in turn, based on exams, coursework, IQ tests or ju-ju is
quite another matter. And if you think that coursework is worthless,
then you are wrong. Taking something with several pinches of salt
does not make it worthless.

Sigh. The point at issue was how variable difficulty and variable score
questions could be incorporated into the type of regime DN suggested. It
couldn't. RH

It can and is.


This I must here. Tell me how. RH

Come back to us when you have some experience
of setting and marking tests, exams and coursework.


--
Robert Henderson
Blair Scandal website: http://www.geocities.com/ blairscandal/
Personal website: http://www.anywhere.demon.co.uk
.

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