Hi
again,
I greatly
appreciated all of the feedback last week about RATs and whether or not it
seemed like mine were too difficult. Many thanks.
In considering your
comments, I thought I should also say that I provide the students with a
'Test Blueprint' for each RAT (via Blackboard). It's basically a sheet of
about a dozen or so objectives. It reads... "In order to do well on the
RAT, be sure that you... understand x concept, can distinguish x and y
concepts... understand and can apply x theory, etc. Moreover,
I allow the students to bring in a sheet of handwritten
notes (one side per chapter) to use during the RATs. Do others do similar
(or different) things?
Another
question. Do any of you do 'open book' RATs? I did
that on a whim last week (because I'd forgotten to post the Test Blueprint
until the last minute) and the students had somewhat higher RAT scores
than usual.
Oh, as suggested, I
implemented the '5-min rule' for the RATs. I required all the teams
to wait to start the TRATs (5 min after the first team finished their
IRATs) and it worked quite nicely.
Finally, I did
forestall the student's requests for me to start lecturing before the RATs
and told them that if I did, we wouldn't be able to work as much in class on
application as we do and that that's the most important part of the
class. I even got in the line about "I'd be doing you a disservice if
I started lecturing on what you can read for yourself" in one class.
Karla