Friday, February 22, 2008
Jacci Chanon was studying in her bedroom Monday night when three of her sorority sisters burst through the door.
“They were saying that everyone got a 100 percent on our biology test,” Chanon, Austin, Tex., sophomore, said.
A visit to the BlackBoard page for her Principles of Biology class confirmed it – perfect scores for everyone.
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A visit to the BlackBoard page for her Principles of Biology class confirmed it – perfect scores for everyone.
Chanon was one of the 923 students in Biology 100 to score a 100 percent on Monday’s exam because the clicker system in Budig Hall crashed.
Nancy Holcroft, lecturer of Biology, said she used the clicker system for the class exam to cut down on paper waste associated with ScanTron tests.
The clickers, designed by eInstruction, crashed after the last student finished taking the test.
Holcroft made the decision to score everyone equally on the test after it became apparent that all of the test scores were erased.
“Knowing that 900 exam scores have just disappeared into the ether is not a particularly nice sensation,” Holcroft said.
Susan Zvacek, director of Instructional Development and Support, said it was still unclear what caused the system to crash. She said the clickers in Budig Hall never malfunctioned during a test before.
“Any time class equipment behaves erratically it is a huge concern for us,” Zvacek said.
She said Instructional Development and Support would work with eInstruction to get a sense of why the system crashed and how to prevent it from happening again.
Jessica Nadine, North Hampton, Mass., junior, was among the students who notched a perfect test score. She said the clicker malfunction was a stroke of good luck.
“I had a paper due that day so, honestly, I only studied for about an hour right before the test,” Nadine said. “It’s a bummer for those who studied really hard, though.”
Holcroft said the clickers would still be used in class for extra credit points, but all future exams would be taken with ScanTron sheets.
“In the end, it’s really a shame,” she said. “I’m not a Luddite, and this really is promising technology. However, in this case, the technology failed and I’m not willing to put students’ grades on the line like that again any time soon.”
—Edited by Samuel Lamb
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Comments
alexnorth (anonymous) says...
You would think that in an exam the professor would have had the students copy answers onto paper as a back-up.
February 23, 2008 at 2:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )