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It's been about ten years since I was in school, but I still remember this loving piece of bullshit: Everyone who took calculus I and/or II had to take this online test of 10 questions. To make sure you didn't cheat, you had to go in person to a random computer lab that had a TA proctoring it, so there were only so many time slots and locations. And even though they started offering it maybe halfway through the semester, the questions they asked required skills you wouldn't get until later, so unless you already knew or studied ahead, you had to wait until close to the end of the semester, and then you'd basically wait in line for like an hour outside of one the labs for enough people to finish so you could use one of the stations. Logistical issues aside, the test was horrible. For Calc I, it was ten equations that you had to provide the derivative for, and likewise for calc II it was ten equations you needed to provide the integral for. They loved throwing tiny little curveball equations here and there to trip you up, but the worst part was the software. It couldn't parse the answers correctly to save its life. You'd frequently get the right answer, but type it in "wrong" so it wouldn't count. The ten questions were all random, and you could re-take it as many times as you want, hence why it took so long to get a station. People would sit there and take it over and over and over again. And it didn't give you the correct answers, either, just say if you were right or wrong, so sometimes you had no idea if it was wrong because it was actually wrong, or if it was wrong because you just forgot to put a space after a comma, or something, so it didn't fit the perfect format it was looking for. This test determined your grade, more or less. You see, whatever letter grade you got on this test was the highest letter grade you could receive for the class, regardless of how well you did in class work, real tests, homework, etc. This test could prevent you from getting your "real" grade. So let's say you're averaging a 92% so far, my school didn't use pluses or minuses, so that's a straight A/4.0. But you take this test, and no matter how many times you take it, you can never break 8/10...sorry, you actually will only get a B/3.0 for the course. And yes, even worse would be only ever getting 7/10 and you end up with a C, despite otherwise having an A. I knew someone who had that happen to them. They took it over and over and over again, and never broke 7/10 for whatever reason...consistent typos in entering in the answer, or just getting the trickier ones, whatever, didn't matter. It happened to me to, but not as dramatically. I had a B average and also could never break 7/10, so I ended up with a C in calc II. I'm pretty sure they dropped that loving test in a year or two after my freshman year when I took it. DrBouvenstein has a new favorite as of 15:01 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 14:58
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BAKA FLOCKA FLAME posted:My biology tutor is cool and all but she keeps pronouncing squamous as squashmous. Like I'm not an expert but I'm 99% sure that ain't right. See, you typed squashmous, but I'm hearing it in my head as Squashmass. So now I have an image in my head of a squash decorated like an X-Mass tree.
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Oct 18, 2013 18:37
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The last few classes I took a few years ago were all online, so this poo poo: gently caress you, every online test/quiz submission system ever invented.
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Jan 29, 2014 23:38
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