I’m in class right now and we’re talking about the results of the midterm. I’d like everyone to take into account the fact that most of the people here are working adults trying to earn a graduate degree. They’re smart people. It’s an important point because the professor was… displeased with the results. It was a 60 point test and the mean was 42.4. The average score was 70%. That begs the question of whether that result is the fault of the students or the instructor.
I’m leaning toward the latter for a handful of reasons. For example, Question 5 was worth six points: “List some factors that determine the size of a business firm.” I listed seven different reasons. He did not mark any of them wrong, but he still gave me five points out of six.
But the worst reason is that the midterm followed his teaching methods. It was a test on Chapters 1-8. That was stated explicitly in the syllabus: “Mid-term examination in class, Ch. 1 – 8”. Now scroll back to last week’s entry. He was teaching us information from Chapter 15 in our third class; Question 3 was asking for information from Chapter 15. I didn’t focus on my notes from class—I studied the information we were supposed to learn from the text. Thus, more points lost.
(In case you’re wondering, I asked him outright during the review where that information was in Chapters 1-8 because I didn’t remember reading it in the text. He told me I should have known what we talked about in class. “So you tested us on something that wasn’t in Chapters 1 through 8?” Yep, he did.)
I’ve heard rumors floating around about students talking to the administration about this professor. Before now, I was kind of indifferent—he’s not very good at teaching the material, but I was managing okay. Now that it may have had a fairly significant impact on my grade, that discussion pales in comparison to a renewed urge to indulge in an ass-kicking. I’m pretty sure he won’t talk about it in class and I doubt it’s anywhere in the textbook, but it won’t be the first time I’ve improvised.
