Eval Sessions

"Quizzes", Self-Assessment and Feedback

 

Our in-class evaluations - or "Quizzes" - will test whether you completed the assignments and allow you to catch up with important concepts. They may also include questions about the broader context: concepts and methods, especially their computational aspects. Also, at times, you may be asked to bring material to class (see below).

These evaluations (normally) consist of five integrated parts: collecting questions, review, quiz, take-up, and final assessment.

 

 

1:	Prior to the evaluation session, we will collect interesting questions on the Student Wiki. A more detailed discussion on Quiz questions is there, we strive to identify checkpoints in the material that demonstrate your understanding and the ability to put what you have learned into practice. Pure memorization questions will probably not make it to the actual Quiz, good questions should stimulate you to think. Designing, writing, editing, and improving these questions can contribute to your participation mark. I will compile the actual Quiz largely from these questions, so if you know how to answer them, you will be well prepared. I really need you to think along with the course, and designing your own quiz questions is an excellent way to do this.
2:	We start off each "quiz" session with an open ended Question and Answer period to address and discuss any remaining questions. If you are able to guess what will be on the quiz, good on you: I'll answer every question in class to the best of my ability even if it's exactly what's on the quiz.
3:	Take the actual "Quiz", it will be about 20 minutes long. I'll hand out the questions, you keep the page face down on your desk until you may start. You write the quiz with a black or blue pen. The rules are the same as for other academic evaluations. This includes: Don't write after time is up. Don't look at your neighbour's work. Don't look at the work of the guy next to your neighbour either. Don't show your work to your neighbour. Don't use unauthorized aids. Don't communicate with others while the quiz is being written. Remember though: it's not the intent that counts, but the action. Not knowing you are committing an academic offence does not mean none has been committed, so ask if you are in doubt. If you are done ahead of time, turn your sheet face-down and put your pen away. Then you can pull out a good book while you are waiting for the time to run down, catch some sleep, or pull out your phone and update your facebook, or train your pokemon. But don't write on your quiz paper again after you have put it away. That would be an academic offence.
4:	Immediately after writing the quiz, you will assess how you did while we discuss the answers: you will mark your answers with a red pen and you will make sure the correct answers are recorded on your sheet: if you got it wrong, point out the error and write down the right answer. This is crucial: at some point you need to have the correct answer written down, either when you originally wrote it, or as you were marking. If the answer still isn't clear to you, ask, ask again, until you understand. Let me repeat this. If you got something wrong, write down the correct answer (with a red pen). You are responsible for marking your answers honestly, for prorating partially correct answers correctly, and for recording your final proposed "mark" without error. Please refer to further clarification below. Please understand that this is a trust-based process that requires a high level of academic integrity. If you fail to apply such integrity to your marking, you may be committing an Academic Offence. You should record your "mark" for your records and if done correctly this will be identical to the final mark that I will assign for the quiz. This will also give you some indication of where you stand, before the course drop date. I won't return the quizzes since I need them to spot-check marks, and for reference when I assign final term grades. Take a picture for your records, and note down your marks. For all practical purposes, your noted down marks will serve as your guideline of how you did up to the drop date.
5:	I will confirm your self-assessed results while reviewing your work and spot-checking some quizzes in detail. If I find errors including but not limited to: that the correct answer is missing, that a wrong answer has been marked as correct, that an inappropriately high partial mark has been recorded, that errors have been made while adding the marks, or that the marks have not been added up at all ... then I will revise the Quiz mark. This may include further deduction of partial marks, full marks for a question, or for the entire quiz. To be very clear: if you mark incorrectly, you may receive zero marks for the entire quiz. In addition, if it appears that there is a pattern of incorrect marking or that the error indicates intent, I will consider whether an Academic Offence may have been committed. If I need to change a mark for a quiz, I will e mail you, but that may not be until shortly before grades are due.

 

Assigned material

At times the assignment will ask you to bring material to class and hand it in with your quiz. These materials will always be marked by me. Typically we will discuss this material in our pick-up session. Therefore I can't grant extensions on missing material. If it's not with you at the beginning of class, it's missing.

Grading

In grading, I will broadly be guided by the following rubrics:

Category	Excellent	Good	Adequate	Marginal	Inadequate
General	Advances the field: strong evidence of original thinking; good organization; material is understood in broader context; capacity to analyze and synthesize; superior grasp of subject matter with sound critical evaluations; evidence of extensive knowledge base.	Knowledgeable and competent: evidence of fundamental understanding and operational grasp of subject matter; awareness of context; some evidence of critical capacity and analytic ability; evidence of familiarity with literature.	Basic proficiency: able to reproduce a majority of facts; basic understanding of the subject matter; ability to develop solutions to simple problems in the material; evidence of exposure to the literature.	Significant gaps: some evidence of familiarity with subject matter; not fully able to reproduce factual knowledge; some evidence that critical and analytic skills have been developed; vague knowledge of literature.	No evidence of competence: little evidence of even superficial understanding of subject matter; weakness in critical and analytic skills; limited or irrelevant use of literature.
Concepts	Adds to expected concepts; well balanced between broad perspective and crucial detail.	All required concepts present; granularity appropriate.	Contains most main concepts; too broad or too deep in parts.	Contains a few of the main concepts; granularity appears somewhat arbitrary.	Contains a limited number of concepts and/or irrelevant ones; haphazard granularity.
Relationships	Meaningful and original insights; precise representation of relationships; annotated where necessary - no ambiguities.	Expected relationships largely complete; relationships meaningful and accurate; annotations generally present.	Missing some important relationships; generally correct; some annotations.	Many omissions; existing ones not fully thought through; meaning vague.	Trivial connections only and/or erroneous connections; meaning not clear.
Organization	Clear and compelling; cuts through superficial complexity but all essential relationships present; discovers unexpected associations; independently finds appropriate level of abstractions.	Thoughtful; clusters and pathways clear; expected relationships present.	Mostly represents topic adequately; some higher-order relationships shown.	Not all parts coherent; missing significant structure.	Choppy; confusing; with erroneous application of principles.
Form	Inspiring	Effective	Adequate	Hasty	Careless

 

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Note: in general, marks will be "holistic" in the sense that a high-level achievement in one category can not simply compensate for an inferior achievement in another category. It is the overall quality, integrated over all categories that counts. Therefore it would not make sense to attempt a "marks-breakdown" by category for these items. Marks negotiations that you base on isolated aspects of these rubrics will be pointless - that's not what the rubrics are for.

 

 

Changing marks?

In all cases in which you believe a grade or partial mark is not correct, e-mail me. I will not adjust marks based on discussions after class, or elsewhere. E-mail me with specifics, and back up your views with evidence. I will correct errors, but please note that marks are not "negotiable" merely on the basis of opinions.

 

Missed quizzes

You may miss as many quizzes as you want, I will initially score these as zero. For your final grade, I will extrapolate missing marks by replacing them with the (lower) quartile of all your evaluations. This replacement value is easily calculated with the R summary() function. If all your quizzes have perfect marks and you miss fewer than the quartile break, the missed quizzes will get perfect marks too.

To illustrate:

# some vector of quiz results. Three quizzes have been missed.
x <- c(3.3, 0, 3.2, 3.6, 0, 2.8, 2.5, 4.0, 0, 2.9, 3.7)

sum(x)
[1] 26    # 60% of 44
 


 
summary(x)
#   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
#  0.000   1.250   2.900   2.364   3.450   4.000 
 
# Replace all zero values with 1st. quantile
x[x==0] <- quantile(x, probs=c(0.25))
 
x
 [1] 3.30 1.25 3.20 3.60 1.25 2.80 2.50 4.00 1.25 2.90 3.70

sum(x)
[1] 29.75  #68% of 44
 

# Almost the same vector. But four quizzes have been missed.
# I am removing the lowest mark: 2.5.
x <- c(3.3, 0, 3.2, 3.6, 0, 2.8, 0, 4.0, 0, 2.9, 3.7) 

summary(x)
#   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
#  0.000   0.000   2.900   2.136   3.450   4.000 
 
x[x==0] <- quantile(x, probs=c(0.25))
x
# [1] 3.3 0.0 3.2 3.6 0.0 2.8 0.0 4.0 0.0 2.9 3.7
 
# Note that in this case all zeros remain, since the lower quartile is zero.
# You will probably want to avoid this situation and thus miss as few 
# quizzes as possible to have a buffer for unexpected situations.

sum(x)
[1] 23.5  # Missing one additional quiz has dropped the marks to 53% of 44,
          # down from 68%.

 

Notes