Spreadsheet For Test Summation

[drcubbin]

Thanks for the comments!

Regarding the speed of grading, I believe if ESs knew that the hosting site had a ScanTron or similar (as Bayard Rustin told us they had), then the test could easily be divided into "scan-able" responses and the rest done by hand. This would make a difference in grading time. Regarding question analysis, I agree with Unome that this is very easy and accurately done visually while grading. I would hate to see SciOly become like "regular school" and begin require us to perform "item analysis" of all tests. Personally, I find nothing more useless or annoying. Ok, there are other more useless and annoying things!

My understanding was that the purpose behind this is to reduce the likelihood of making errors while adding up points.

To clarify -- the purpose of the idea is to save time, increase accuracy, and aid myself in writing future tests. I won't share any data with teams, except maybe general observations (i.e., "only 32% of teams got Question X right").

Drcubbin, I'm not sure what you're worried about exactly but I'm just floating the idea of using this for myself to aid me in scoring and also to analyze the test questions. I agree that scantrons are a great idea, and I'll look into that in the future. This is mostly for situations in which they're unavailable or unnecessary.

Certainly, my main goal for this is too increase the speed and accuracy of grading. I know that summation errors and awards ceremony-delays are both very common, so I wanted to look into the possibility of reducing both of them.

I've found that for tests with large MC/TF sections, I won't be the one grading that. For me, that was the case for DG at Duke, where I never had a chance to even look over those scores, and will also be the case for DG at states. If I'm able to see which questions are too hard and which are too easy, I can better adjust future tests.

I appreciate the heads up about sheets. It may be necessary to allow simultaneous work (and I personally don't think it's *that* bad), but I also prefer excel.

I think I'll discuss this with the other people involved in DG to see if there's support. If it works out well and speeds up the process, I'll share a template for others to use.

Alex, I'm not worried about anything. I thought this was a forum for open dialogue and I was adding my thoughts - nothing more. I wonder why you thought I sounded worried. And I am not a big one for large MC/TF sections either (although they are unavoidable unless it is the dreaded ExpD).

[syo_astro]

Alex, I'm not worried about anything. I thought this was a forum for open dialogue and I was adding my thoughts - nothing more. I wonder why you thought I sounded worried. And I am not a big one for large MC/TF sections either (although they are unavoidable unless it is the dreaded ExpD).

(without quoting all the related parts) Indeed...my I prefer short answer/free response over MC/TF, but I use a mix. Anyway, I agree this could help, for example, when I make questions of varying point values, which I am eternally debating about with myself.

dcrubbin's point about regular school and item analysis is valid. Maybe there's value to it, but scioly tests are pretty non-standard anyway...and even if you do stats and find barely anyone got a question, that doesn't make the question inherently bad without more info.

[knightmoves]

Is this feasible? Do you think it would be too slow? Certainly it would aid in accuracy and speed of summation, but I'm worried that entering scores into the spreadsheet would negate the time saved on summation.

It would take longer to score, and longer to validate (because you have to validate the data entry). It's useful from the point of view of teaching a class (helps spot the questions people are having problems with) but that's not relevant for a scioly competition.

Plus it requires eveyone doing the grading to have networked laptops to hand. Most schools aren't keen on having random strangers connect to their network. Most grading I've seen is done by groups of 2-4 people sitting around a table.

Unless you're doing scantron or something, in which case this is all automatic, and free...