This term I’m teaching (and coordinating) a 1200 person Integral Calculus course at UTM. Term Test 1 went surprisingly well for students, and Term Test 2 was an unqualified success (very high average, lots of people got 100% on the test).
This lead to the following (paraphrased) question on our course message board:
Is the exam going to be a lot more difficult because the averages on the term tests were so high?
I took the time to think about exactly why I don’t like adjusting the difficulty of exams based on students doing well previously. Here’s the answer I posted on our message board.
Continue reading Aligned teaching and punishing student success
Mike Pawliuk - Mathematics 