Some of the students said in interviews last week that they had produced nearly identical answers on the exam because they had shared class notes or sought help with the test from graduate students who were their teaching fellows, which they understood to be allowed.
The exception was Ivy, who switched from incorrect answers on the exam to correct responses in the interview.
Students who were given the small-group discussion option spent one discussion period reviewing the 10 exam questions that received the fewest correct answers on the exam given in that class.
In itself this discussion would be as valuable as the kinds of questions students have to answer on the exams anyway.
It can happen inside the classroom or can be a homework assignment, in particular by giving students the challenging, higher-order questions that you want them to be able to answer on the exams.
For the written exam corrections, students wrote a minimum of two sentences, one explaining why their chosen answer on the exam was incorrect and one explaining the correct answer; depending on the nature of the specific question, a longer written response was sometimes given.
The oral exam (90 minutes) assumes as its point of departure the student's answers on the written exam.
State records indicate that a staff member is suspected of "accessing 11th-grade answer documents and altering answers" on the physics exam, said John Boivin, administrator for the testing office at the California Department of Education.
Even when a section of the material was discussed at length after a quiz, it was apparent this whole-class discussion did not promote conceptual understanding for all students, as significant misconceptions were revealed in student answers on the final exam.
