Does your school have an exam appeals process.

[EMH]

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My school has an appeals process following an exam that I think is fairly unique and has some problems that we are having a hard time getting the faculty to address. I'll explain our appeals process, then state what I believe to be wrong with it. Please post how other schools do this and if it works out well there. I'm trying to brain storm for a solution.

After the exam pre-lim scores are usually posted the same day. The next afternoon a 'grade letter' showing your response and the correct answer is available to pick up. You can then use your grade letter to look at the questions from the exam on a lab PC for only 1 hour. If you think a question was flawed, had no correct answer, or had multiple answers you can send your appeal along with a referenced support to our class chosen appeals committee. The appeals committee then is supposed to choose which appeals are worthy of being sent to course directors, course directors or lecturers grant or deny appeals and reply with explanations.

What's wrong with our system: One course has about at 10% appeal rate. This class on occasion has deleted questions that I know there was nothing wrong with (I believe to bring up grades). The system doesn't address the faculty's stated purpose for having an appeals process, "to help the student learn what he didn't know for the future". The majority of student's questions about appeals don't get addressed because the appeals committee cuts them off. And perhaps the biggest thing is when taking an exam if you spot a bad question do you pick what you think is correct, what you think the question writer was thinking, or the answer you think is most appealable.

 

[OncoCaP]

My school has an appeals process following an exam that I think is fairly unique and has some problems that we are having a hard time getting the faculty to address. I'll explain our appeals process, then state what I believe to be wrong with it. Please post how other schools do this and if it works out well there. I'm trying to brain storm for a solution.

After the exam pre-lim scores are usually posted the same day. The next afternoon a 'grade letter' showing your response and the correct answer is available to pick up. You can then use your grade letter to look at the questions from the exam on a lab PC for only 1 hour. If you think a question was flawed, had no correct answer, or had multiple answers you can send your appeal along with a referenced support to our class chosen appeals committee. The appeals committee then is supposed to choose which appeals are worthy of being sent to course directors, course directors or lecturers grant or deny appeals and reply with explanations.

What's wrong with our system: One course has about at 10% appeal rate. This class on occasion has deleted questions that I know there was nothing wrong with (I believe to bring up grades). The system doesn't address the faculty's stated purpose for having an appeals process, "to help the student learn what he didn't know for the future". The majority of student's questions about appeals don't get addressed because the appeals committee cuts them off. And perhaps the biggest thing is when taking an exam if you spot a bad question do you pick what you think is correct, what you think the question writer was thinking, or the answer you think is most appealable.

For nearly all of our exams, we don't get the exams back and we don't know what we missed. We get a numerical score and grade and that's that. Often the score is broken down by subject matter (physio, anatomy, etc.). However, if we encounter a problem with an exam question during the exam, we can write a note on some special paper and turn it in with our exam. Often the course directors will improve the questions for the next year's class. We never find out anything about the comments we had on exam questions. The idea is to make the process similar to licensing exams. The purpose of these exams is to assess our ability moreso than for us to learn (although you inevitably do learn something). The deans say that returning the exams would interfere with the assessment because students would have files of old exams, etc.

 

[osli]

We are allowed to view our exams along with the correct answers under supervised conditions, nothing to write on or with other than highlighter (still not really sure what the purpose of that one is). We have an hour or so for review, and turn our exams back in at the end. If we have a question about one of the questions (either a disagreement with the stated correct answer, or want clarification as in "how in the hell can you figure that out from the question stem" type of thing, we can write it on an appeals "form" and turn it in to the supervising faculty.

The school uses a statistical system to search for "bad" questions (i.e., ones where the class average wasn't much better than guessing, and both the smartest and dumbest in the class seemed to miss the question equally). Could be that the question had a correct answer, but simply wasn't fair game (not covered at all in the lecture material or reading assignments - usually there on accident from another section or something, or was just written so poorly no one could decipher it), or maybe was caused from a bad key or typo or maybe the prof didn't know their stuff or something. The school also evaluates all "question" forms submitted from reviews, and the prof writing the question as well as an assigned reviewing faculty member for that section looks at the question and decides if something was wrong or not.

Sometimes the process works, sometimes it doesn't. The internal system catches most bad questions, and often we'll have about 2% of the questions either omitted or multiple correct answers accepted for the final scoring. The student submitted clarification requests sometimes get a question changed, sometimes not. I've had occasions where the professor's notes explicitly stated a different answer choice than was given as "correct" and the prof simply said their notes must be wrong, or bad, or whatever. Doesn't happen often, and it isn't a big deal. I haven't written a request in a long time now... I just take what the school says I made and move on to the next section/quiz/whatever.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Ours works thusly.

There is a scheduled session sometime after the exam where you get your test booklet back without your bubble sheet. Presumably you circled your answers in pencil and you go over the test with the coarse director and all classmates who chose to attend present.

To challenge a question, you have to present it in front of the class, who can support you or disagree. Mostly it's support, but there have been a few cases where people tried to make a BS reason to get a question thrown out (that they missed) and people have shouted them down becuase they don't want to lose a point (Mostly this happens when someone overthought a easy question that most people got right). It also serves as a forum to discuss how to improve next years class. There is also statistical analysis of the questions where "bad" questions are thrown out (missed by people who do well vs. those who do poorly).

 

[njbmd]

Here is how I handle the exam-question process. First of all, any question that more than 75% of the class misses, I toss out and give those points to the class so it is theoretically possible to score more than 100 points on a 100-point exam if you got every question correct and then extra points because I discarded questions (doesn't happen very often but it has happened a couple of times).

Second, I allow students to examine the answer key (supervised) at the end of the test provided every student in the class has taken the exam. You have an idea instantly of what you have missed.

Third, I allow students to appeal their grade/questions within one week of the test. The appeals must be in writing and must include why the student believes the question was unfair. These appeals are evaluated by another faculty member and are ruled on by both myself and the rest of the faculty.

Most of the "problem-questions" are eliminated by me before the appeals. I get very few appealed questions and I make sure that they are thoroughly evaluated by both myself and others before a ruling is made.

 

[Pinkertinkle]

I don't care about my course grades cuz theyre just P or NP.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I don't care about my course grades cuz theyre just P or NP.

Lucky. We have old school ABCDF grading, which probably leads to a much more active exam appeal process.

The big problem with our process is that we're not allowed to review exam questions after we take a test. We still have paper exams, and we get to keep an answer sheet for every test. The key is usually released a few hours after the exam, but the key doesn't have any explanations. So if you have a problem with a question, you have to note it on your answer sheet while you're taking the exam and then appeal it. We don't have a committee, but we do have an elected review chair who we forward appeals to. He then sends those to the professor who makes a decision. Some professors are pretty lenient and some only throw out questions based on statistical analysis. It's normal to get maybe 1 to 2 questions back on a test.

 

[nogolfinsnow]

Ours has an internal check as someone mentioned above. If a certain % of the top 1/3 and bottom 1/3 missed a question, it is tossed out. We are also free to email any of the course professors if we think there was a problem with a question. On every test there seem to a be a few questions that they end up accepting more than 1 answer as correct. I feel it's a pretty open system, profs are receptive to feedback, and crappy questions get tossed.

 

[Flaxmoore]

My school simply has a "review" soon after the exam. You get the exam, an answer key with your answers listed and the right ones, and that's it. No way to write anything down or appeal anything, which gets frustrating.

On our first quiz in anatomy, one question was over what kind of cell is active in connective tissue. Technically, since blood is a loose irregular connective tissue, all the choices were correct. The question was not bonused or discarded, as there was no way to appeal.

 

[imable24]

bump