No more questions? Really?

[steuard]

My students are apparently remarkably calm about this exam I'm giving tomorrow. I've had a big chunk of office hours this morning, but not a soul showed up to ask me anything. Even in class yesterday, one section got out a few minutes early because nobody had anything else to ask. (And I had to resort to torture to draw out the question before that: I started singing until a student asked something to shut me up.) I know there's not a whole lot of new material on this test, but some of it's pretty tricky. I'm surprised.

I guess that means I don't need to worry too much about difficulty level, eh? :)

Comments

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Please tell me you were actually singing the linked song.

Oh yes. But I didn't get all that far through it before someone asked a question.

To address your next bit, I'm actually quite fond of trying to out-wait the students when I want them to participate. I don't generally count a specific time, but I'm very happy to wait well into the "uncomfortable silence" range. That's especially important when I ask for an answer from "somebody who hasn't talked yet today": over the course of the class, I get deeper and deeper into the shy portion of the population.

a simple shift in phrasing, from something like "What's the accusative singular of puella?" to "Who knows the accusative singular of puella?"

That sounds like it could be surprisingly effective. Thanks for the idea!

practice-test-as-basis-for-whatever-review-you-needed-to-do-anyway; I recommend it.

Yeah, that probably is a good idea. I've avoided practice tests thus far here, but mostly (I'll admit) because I'd rather just re-use questions from previous years' exams for that rather than writing entirely new ones. It takes me far too long to write a test as is.

Info dump appreciated!

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I admit the practice test is time-consuming to write. But then you can reuse it next year ;). And you get some of the time back in lesson-planning -- the review session plans itself once the students have taken the test, because you go over it and they ask lots of questions. Also you may be able to get applicable questions, or ones you can readily modify to be applicable, from other physics professors (ah, teaching: where you tell your students to do work themselves and attribute scrupulously, and then steal lesson plans from your friends ;).