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Showing posts with the label grades

Stress, rote learning and multiple attempts of Board Examinations

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NEP2019 Draft Allowing multiple attempts for board exams of different subjects after semester end is unlikely to reduce the stress of students, it may further increase the burden of students, as they have to read all the chapters or topics of the subject again to score more. It will be better if they make chapter wise or topic wise exams, with a pass and fail system so that they have reattempt only those chapters which they have failed. It not only reduces stress, but students will master the topics. Classrooms can have mastery-based grading https://www.edutopia.org/article/blended-learning-built-teacher-expertise In mastery-based grading each topic content should be linked with tests, that checks the conceptual understanding of topics. Test shouldn't be used in isolation without content. No random test papers without content should be allowed in education system. An example of guided notes, which prompts questions on every paragraph. https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/urls/book-amiyatul...

If all scientific discovery relies on peer review for validation, why not assessment be done through peer review?

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All scientific discovery relies on peer review for validation, Why not the assessment of schools and colleges be done through peer review? Peer Review definition: evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field. In case of open peer review, the reviewer reports are published which can again go through auditing. Benefits of open peer review: 1) Feedback to the students After a test, feedback to the student becomes a crucial part of their learning. Feedback can be in many forms such as detailed corrections of the answers, making their misconceptions corrected for a particular concept, identifying their specific problems and asking them to take necessary steps to improve. 2) Time-saving of teachers As this can be done in a collaborative manner, it will give freedom to any teacher from the respective subjects to annotate the assessments, the burden is no more to the individual teacher, it will be shared among the country or world. The burden o...

Common prevailing myths in education that needs to be busted

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A student is not scoring well, the main reason given: He/She has the less innate ability . He/She was not working hard . Let's bust the second myth first. My question to schools, teachers, and parents is after spending about 6-7 hours in schools, or 24 hrs in residential schools and colleges, how can you really blame children for not working hard. Why do schools expect children to study all by themselves? Why they have to do homework? The problem is not about working hard, it's about not following effective study strategies. Not providing them to do enough retrieval practice. The implementing of the effective study strategies is a very complicated process and often contextual, so much of attributes involved, from content, curriculum to test questions. But the good thing is so much of research already available that will guide teachers to help students in learning. http://www.learningscientists.org/ Now the first myth: She lacks the innate ability. Fact: All organisms at the i...

Experimental manipulation after tests using eSALT feedback from students

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Personalized pre and post test need to be conducted in the following manner with experimental manipulation: While giving questions, each student needs to be asked for how easy or difficult the questions are. Student Feedback for Questions Ease ( eSALT ): 1) Easy (E) 2) Safe (S) 3) Average (A) 4) Low (L) 5) Trouble (T) Also, keep space for some specific feedback that students want to comment on the question while answering. (e.g. Mistakes in questions, concept not taught in the class, or not understood, unable to recall or don't know the answers or specific part of answers like formula or for example atomic number of element, unable to understand the question). Ask students to be elaborative and be particular to the problem faced while writing feedback. Students can give not so useful feedback in order to hide their problem, so teachers should be make them feel safe so that they can express themselves. Teachers curation 1) Students making mistakes with Questions tagged Easy, Safe,...

Probability distribution of marks should not be normal.

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What type of variable is the mark, discrete or continuous? Marks is a discrete random variable that has a finite number of values or a countable number of values. A continuous random variable has infinitely many values, and those values can be associated with measurements on a continuous scale in such a way that there are no gaps or interruptions. Requirements for a Probability Distribution 1. ΣP(x) = 1 where x assumes all possible values of marks 2. 0 ≤ P(x) ≤ 1 for every individual value of x For example, 2000 students gave exams with full marks of 10, the probability distribution of marks to have a normal like curve will have following frequency distribution given in the table. Marks x Frequency f Probability P(X=x) 0 4 0.002 1 23 0.0115 2 99 0.0495 3 227 0.1135 4 399 0.1995 5 497 0.2485 6 390 0.195 7 251 0.1255 8 84 0.042 ...

Personalized learning goals: New information is built over reusing of previous information

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asg_avW9nK4&w=320&h=266] Some students perform better, while others not. What are the main reasons? 1) Study material provided and learning strategies used by teachers. It simply doesn't meet the learning criteria. https://github.com/amiyatulu/teacher_resources Students are feed with so much of abstract stuff as a result only those students excel who have a better memory retention capacity of abstract information and those who work too hard for it. But such a hard work is meaningless, as you will forget such information after exams are over. 2) Not teaching kids from where they are.  I will explain it with a concrete example. While teaching chemistry, one of my students was so fast in holding information and doing the problems, while other was slow. The reason for her/his slowness is not that he/she is less intelligent, it's because (s)he is taking more time for processing due to lack of previous foundational information.  Wh...

What are the problems with grades?

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The problem with grades: 1) Grades are an oversimplification of achievements that say very little about it. They are just numbers which say nothing about what you know or about your working skills. 2) Grades are often biased and are done based upon the context of questions . Sometimes questions are not well made, most often they are just repeats of previous year questions. Because of this they really don't check the critical high order thinking of the children. 3) Malpractice . It is also rampant in our education system. 4) Too much of psychological pressure from parents, teachers to score more, that leads them to depression and sometimes even they take drastic steps like suicide. 5)Grades shift the goal from learning to just marks , which can be achieved by many many means with our inefficient education system. 6) No grades are given for effort , grades are given only for solving hypothetical book problems . I have seen many students struggling in our education system, trying t...

Building scientific real world problem-solving temper among students by transforming our entrance exams

Using just MCQs for entrance exams has many drawbacks. MCQs just test examiner way of thinking, not students, neither it tests originality of students. MCQs don't test what approach a student took to solve the problem, or why he/she was unable to solve it. Also, even if (s)he knows the strategy to solve the problem, many times (s)he can't reach the solution, because of mistakes in intermediate steps. The result is losing the marks. There are situations like unable to do the calculations, unable to recall the formula, even if he/she understand how the formula works. How many times you as a student feel frustrated for doing irrelevant silly mistakes and lose marks? I find many being frustrated for doing minor calculation errors, unable to recall even if they know it. Students are treated in a manner as if they are completely not allowed to make any mistakes. A question in chemistry about the rate of reaction does not test your logarithmic knowledge of mathematics. Even though it...