33 What we talk about when we talk about tests

 

A.  Titania and Oberon are the longest married couple in Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Shakespeare provides the following insights into marriage by showing his audience that

1. Even though they have sex with others they get back together at the end.  “Hand in hand with fairy grace, will we sing and bless this place.”
2. Betrayal can extend as far as giving your wife drugs to play a trick on her: “And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes, and make her full of hateful fantasies.”
3. Married people don’t live as individuals but have groups of friends and followers who can have some impact on the marital relationship.  “But room, fairy:  here comes Oberon.”  “And here my mistress, would that he were gone!”
4. When married people separate the world around them can feel their pain and becomes confused and crazy.  “And this same progeny of evils comes from our debate.”
5. Marriage is challenging and difficult but long married people like to see others getting married.  “So shall all the couples three ever true in loving be:  and the blots of nature’s hand shall not in their issue stand.”

This was a multiple answer question on my Philosophy of Love and Sex midterm.  Most of my students got part of it incorrect.  Every response was correct.  Some students got the answer wrong because they didn't read the directions for "multiple answer" questions.  I'm not sure why the others got it wrong.  As with most of my objective tests, when I hand it back I'll give them the option of making arguments for their points of view on any missed question.  If they can explain their reasoning in such a way that they show me they understand the material, then I'll give them the points back.  

The purpose of a content-focused objective test is to

a.  determine who has been doing the homework.
b.  see if students know how to memorize course material.
c.  help students engage more deeply with certain aspects of the course material.
d.  make life easier for the person grading.
e.  amuse the creator of the test.
f.  punish people who don't have a good memory.
g.  punish people who don't have good study habits.
h.  make it possible for someone not involved with the class or subject matter to grade the test.
i.  make it possible for a cold heartless machine who doesn't give a rat's ass about any of the students in the course much less the subject matter to grade the test.

LY #116 Post-Show Downs

I broke my own rules last week and skipped two scheduled posting days.

I was tired and sad from having such a wonderful trip.  I think of this kind of energy drop as the post-show downs, the blues that arrive after a planned-for performance is over.  I've recognized this experience ever since being in my high school production of Midsummer Night's Dream.  I didn't realize I'd experience it so deeply simply from an eight minute speech.

But it wasn't just my presentation, of course.  Nor was it my nine happy hours in Walt's World.  I think my low energy flow signaled an acknowledgement that I've come to the end of my life as an academic who goes to conventions.  

Now, there may be more conferences in my future but they will be the sort where I have an "elevator pitch" that I cram into the ears of tired literary agents who will note my wrinkles and lack of Botox and wonder why they're listening to someone so aged  (Actually, there are plenty of folks my age writing in the genre I hope to pursue, so the age-thing shouldn't be a problem.)

But, I'm getting back into the swing of things as my last winter quarter rushes to a close.  February, where is thy sting?  Tomorrow we talk about gender stereotypes in Visual Rhetoric, starting with John Berger's knitting together of artistic nudes and advertising.   Also tomorrow I will be giving my last lecture in my last week-day public speaking class.  And the interpersonal class is focusing in on conflict management.

I tried something new in the live interpersonal this quarter.  Instead of requiring a journal I've had them taking the same quizzes as those taken by the online classes.  And here's what I don't understand.  How is it that students can take open-book objective tests after viewing a slide show telling them the exact concepts that are going to be on the test and still get Fs?  I don't understand how that's possible.  I myself would need to work quite hard to avoid studying at that level.  Yet, it clearly can be done.

Good teacher, bad test writer, great students?

It's a conundrum. (Which, according to the online Merriam Webster dates from 1645 and means "1: a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun 2 a: a question or problem having only a conjectural answer b: an intricate and difficult problem.")

The teams all got between B and A on their midterms. One team was through in 15 minutes with what was supposed to be a 40 minute exam. Sigh. In one way I'm very happy for them. In another way I feel like a total palooka. (thirties slang, boys and girls)

In another part of my life, a colleague wandered over to my blog and read the stuff about charmers and stoners. He's a guy whose life pretty much revolves around getting people to give money to a worthy cause so he's got to use charm or, as he put it, being "directly engaged". I'll do something a bit suspect and quote him, without his permission or his name. He said,

"Well, somehow I ended up at your blog (which I enjoyed—I quickly reviewed all the way down to stoned and charmed) and liked the thought you gave me on people being charming. Maybe the difference is that between being directly engaged and being charming, the latter having an element of working a situation. And who likes to feel they are being worked?"

He believes in his cause (as do I) and he has ferocious charm and some good looks (slender, great cheekbones, intense eyes). I told him that sometimes being "worked" is what is called for. And that made me think a lot about communication and why I love studying it and why it's such an important topic. I don't think life is ever as easy as: "Just be real." "Just be yourself." I think that's a ration of horse patootie (as Col. Potter used to say) made popular by money grubbing gurus in the 1960s, '70s.

My question is, in a postmodern world is authenticity even possible? What is authenticity? How much of our communication is "of the moment"? If I am responding absolutely authentically to you, and then tomorrow I have to respond absolutely authentically to someone who dislikes you, but I like you both, does that mean that I am inauthentic when I say I like you or inauthentic when, the next day I say I like your enemy? Are we past Aristotle? Is the virtuous man no longer the consistent one? Or is virtue only a matter of consistency within a given parameter? If communication is a matter of transactions (I give you attention, you give me attention. I give you praise, you give me fidelity, etc.) how can an economics of friendship be wrong? And yet we tend to think of relationships as being outside of economics.

And now, just to be "authentic" and "honest," I will tell him I talked about him on my blog. Heck, this set of utterances can't be only about boring classroom stuff. Gotta engage directly with some actual communication issues.