i’ve been feeling neglectful towards blogging, but after i looked at what the other ta’s are doing, i was pretty proud of myself for being the most current. *high five to me*
::exam 3 review session::
something that bothers me about review sessions is the passive nature of them and the feeling that i get standing in front of a group of students, as if they’re challenging me to tell them something they don’t know. this time i thought i was doing a review session by myself so i worked on a plan. caitlin ended up being there and when i told her my plan, she was interested so we did it. we had 17 in attendance.
i printed off the powerpoint questions and gave each table a set and told them to come up with answers together. then we went through the slideshow and the table with the question answered it and we asked for agreement from the rest. it flowed nicely and while there was minimal disagreement, they did ask questions about things that they didn’t understand. following that, i handed each table a question from the study guide to put together answers for and explain the answer to the rest of the group. each question also referenced a study and they needed to tell the rest of the group what the study was and why it was important. that seemed to go well too. we finished in time and a couple of students stayed to ask some questions. i have an email out to attendees to get their feedback.
i’ve helped with 4 review sessions thus far and attendance has definitely dwindled. i think students go to the first one thinking it’s going to be helpful and that it will be the answer to getting a good grade on the exam. if they don’t feel it helped, they don’t go to any more. one question i asked of the attendees at the last one was what their ideal review session would be like. i’m curious to see if anyone responds.
::exam::
students seemed to finish earlier and dr. g said close to 20 students earned an 88% or better. at our last ta meeting, dr. g. suggested we look at the practice exam statistics to see if we could tell if the questions were discriminating or what the level of difficulty was.
interestingly, it appears that 99 students took the practice exam. i did a quick % average and it appears that the mean percentage was 62%, 8 students scored 92% or higher, the rest hovered in the C range. at a precursory glance, the questions appear to have the right difficulty levels, ranging from really hard ones (.3 answering correctly) to easier ones (.83 answering correctly). i noticed there weren’t any questions that everyone answered correctly, nor were there any questions that everyone missed. in my opinion, this would be an effective practice exam.
i looked at the questions i submitted next. i had a hard time with this. the difficulty lies in what i know and all the subjectivity that goes with it. the information i know clouds what i write and i assume a bit too much. in any case, one question had a 67% avereage, another had a 61% and the other 42%. evaluating the numbers, i guess i did pretty good. i asked if i could try writing some more questions. i have to do that later today for quiz 10 and dr. g said i could try some for the final exam as well.
i don’t know if i’ll ever teach psychology, or teach anything for that matter, but i want to leave this ta opportunity at least competent enough so that if i decide later in my career that i do want to teach, at least i have a foundation for it. while i have an idea of what i want to do, things happen to divert the path and i’m open-minded enough to be aware of opportunities and challenges that come my way.