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[moonglum]

I'm a grad student teaching an intro course to religion at a big state school. When giving Big Test #2 (out of 3 for the course) to the first section, I noticed that it was taking even the better students far too long to complete the test and figured I'd made it too hard. So I cut out a chunk of the test for the other section.

The end result is that the average in Section II is 10 points higher than Section I, which I don't think is fair. (Also, in the case of Section II, the average ended up too high, at 89%.)

What's the preferred and/or wisest way to handle this?

Thanks.

[cc_alan]

I'm a grad student teaching an intro course to religion at a big state school. When giving Big Test #2 (out of 3 for the course) to the first section, I noticed that it was taking even the better students far too long to complete the test and figured I'd made it too hard. So I cut out a chunk of the test for the other section.

The end result is that the average in Section II is 10 points higher than Section I, which I don't think is fair. (Also, in the case of Section II, the average ended up too high, at 89%.)

Next time, don't make such a drastic change to the exam between sections. This will allow you to adjust all of them. You could try just scaling the grades up for section I.

I suggest you go search the "In the Classroom" forum, also. There was a very involved discussion that covered adjusting/grades and reasons in favor and against it (I don't remember the title of the thread even though I posted in it).

Alan

[moonglum]

Thanks for the suggestion on the other forum. I just posted there.

Thanks.

[rockprof]

For future reference, I would recommend always giving the exact same test to different sections of the same course.  Doing otherwise would set you up for student complaints (valid, in my opinion).  As you gain more experience designing tests and teaching, the problem typically won't occur but if you find a test is legitimately too difficult (and not that you just have a bad batch of students), it's easy enough to appropriately curve the grade.