::A Geek in Korea::

Grading papers today was exhausting. I know how to construct quizzes, and I know how to make a key to keep my answers straight, but when you start staring at papers for hours on end you begin to question everything. Night becomes day, Up becomes down. Beaten over the head with incorrect grammar long enough enough, you start to wonder if it wasn’t you that was making the mistake the entire time. That’s why you absolutely need a rock solid key before you start grading. If you are certain your key is correct, no matter how loopy you go in the course of grading, things will work out.

When I started making my quiz this week, I thought I had made something fair and unambiguous. I was 100% sure of my answers and thought my test was very tough but fair. I told all of my classes EXACTLY what to study, and put ONLY that on the quiz. It was a matter of time and a matter of them studying the material on their own to finish. I had decided to try to set a precedent of hard written examinations with concrete answers I could show students later if they needed to point to something and ask why they had gotten the grade they had. Other people looked it over and thought it was a little long for just a quiz, but not unreasonable with enough time in class.

After grading a few classes I found out that there was one answer I thought was extremely poor. I thought that I might have the answer on the key wrong depending on how you read the materials. I went into work to see what the text book itself said was the answer. I was 90% confident I was correct with my interpretation of the grammar, but I wanted to be sure. I would hate to have a quiz with a grammar mistake I made shoved back in my face. I showed my book to several of the other teachers which confirmed my suspicion that one particular question on the quiz wasn’t good and should be thrown out. That was fine, as I had plenty of other questions. The other questions about my quiz resolved exactly as I had put them on my key, so I didn’t even need to change the grading scale to adjust for the change.

The other professors told me that I made the right decision in ruling that way. The other advice I had used in making the quiz led me to the right decisions. I’m a self-trained teacher, but it is good to know that my instincts were correct. It’s also great to have people willing to listen to me with a problem and help when I need to make a choice. They also gave me further advice about how to keep out of problems after giving quizzes and examinations. I’m going to be following their ideas. I’ve got all my quizzes graded (In one day!) but now I need to start calculating grades and whatnot. Another week, another long Friday at the office.