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[questions]

I'm getting an interesting distribution this semester on my weekly quizzes in my gen ed sections-- a 80-100+ band of about 1/3-1/4 of class and a 0-50 band of the rest. I typically ask between 5 to 10 short answer questions, in part over past readings and in part over readings due on the day. Usually this works, along with participation, to bring grades a bit up from my exams, which are generally pretty difficult. This semester, more than half of both sections are failing on the quizzes, which is a bad sign for the overall grade distribution--down about 20% average from last semester. Is this just a couple of bad sections? A lot of the questions are the same ones I asked last semester... Could any of this be me?

[mountainguy]

Bimodal distributions are always a little perplexing, but it's probably the students and not you. If you're seeing questions left blank or answers that are spewed nonsense, it means they aren't doing the reading. I would worry only if you're seeing answers that are coherent but incorrect.