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Weird, I'm 26 and in college math was all about 'how you got there'. Our tests were like essays, a single problem in either paragraph form or formula form, and
by lighthazard 12y ago
Weird, I'm 26 and in college math was all about 'how you got there'. Our tests were like essays, a single problem in either paragraph form or formula form, and several pages to write down how you achieved your goal. Following proper procedure was rewarded, even if the answer is wrong.
In high school, however, my school implemented a 'pass the test first' policy. We learned what the Regents (spelling on this) exam would have and learned only that. Still, most of my teachers always graded the procedure and not the answers (in fact, my teachers suggested we look at the answers afterwards to compare if our answer is right).
- army 12y agoEven if you have to show your work, a lot of students will just blindly try a few canned approaches until they get something that looks about right. Actually understanding what you're doing is definitely more efficient, but a lot of people muddle through without really understanding the reasoning. One of the worst examples of that mentality I saw in a first year university course was a multi-part question where one part had the student calculate something and the next part had the student do something to sanity check the answer. One student got the first part wrong and then fudged the working in the second part to get it to say that the first answer was correct. Of course, this completely misses the point of checking the answer. Worse, they came up to me after class and argued that they deserved full points because the second error was "a consequence of" the first one. They seemed totally perplexed that I didn't agree.