Traditionally, students are "examined" at the end of a course- often by answering questions. Back when I did this, the student often did not receive any feedback other than the exam "score". Thus some students would go through life remembering the wrong answer to some (or many) questions. This seems to be less than educational, especially if important questions were used for the examination (hey, it COULD happen!). With computer grading, a quick remonstration and a second or third chance to answer - followed by an explanation- would seem to be more educational. But why wait for the end of the course to start this- why not start it the very first day! You arrive in class and begin answering questions! and LEARNING. Hard to fall asleep? and no more skipping class! There is an old movie that suggests Haavaad law school worked this way for one student in each class, but why not for everyone? Siri might be able to do more than ANSWER questions?
-- lewstanley, May 15 2016

Or you could use [land]'s idea... Normzone_20Paragraph_20Breaker
[normzone, May 17 2016]

"Experience is the harshest teacher, because she gives the test frst and the lesson afterward... "
-- 8th of 7, May 15 2016


A fine scheme. Also it would allow one to remember scenarios and remember the principles involved. It extends "teaching to the test" to its logical conclusion.
-- bungston, May 16 2016


Very good.

I found, being bounced around like an army brat that sometimes my brother and I would be arriving at a new school just before some exam or other that we were taking pretty much blind if our last school hadn't covered the material yet, that many test answers are contained elsewhere in the test itself.

The trick was to answer the simplest questions first, which would prime you for a few of the harder questions, which might help with a couple of things you were totally clueless about... and of course having a knack for guessing c,b,d, or a correctly helped quite a bit.
...except for math.

...had to show your work for math.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 16 2016


I suspect that subjects where failure = death would be approached with something other than the actual thing. Some representation of the real thing, perhaps laid out in words and figures in such a way as to test and measure understanding. There must be a word for such a thing. I feel like I have read it recently.
-- bungston, May 17 2016


/You could present the question and the multiple phases of attempts and explanations, in an entirely synthetic language that nobody has ever seen before. /

This sounds like it could be an intriguing video game. I envision the explanations delivered by an obviously well-meaning but completely unintelligible alien before the player is released for another try.

[lewstanley] I do not mean to imply that you personally are either obviously well meaning or completely unintelligible. Non-obvious and incompletely remain possibilities.
-- bungston, May 17 2016


Will this test include paragraph breaks?
-- normzone, May 17 2016


I have just started doing this with a bizarre and badly produced little introduction to Hinduism and it is surprisingly effective, even though it may only be triggering some dozen years of perpetual exams before I discovered women. [+]
-- 4and20, May 21 2016



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