After our first midterm exam was graded and return to us during class, the results seemed to come as an awful shock to the entire class. After hearing that basically half the class failed, I was SURE I was part of the failing half. I even told the professor I didn't want to see my score. Knowing of my chances of failure, I could've just tried and worked harder for the next one, I just didn't want to know HOW badly I did. However, when the professor told me I did want to take a look, I just hoped that wasn't him being mean. When I saw that I had passed with a good score, I gave a sigh of relief. This semester was turning into one of my most difficult semesters so far and this was good news. However, half of the class didn't get the same good news I had.
It surprised me when the professor let us decide the next exam's format and the grading for the one we had just received back. It turned into chaos at first until Bailey took initiative and began to mediate everyone's ideas. These ideas included extra credit to add points to the current exam, take home exam for the next midterm, and getting rid of the essay. Part of me took the accommodating approach. I didn't really care if I got extra credit or not and since I had passed this first exam, I was suddenly felt more at ease and confident about the testing format.
However, when I realized people began to vote against EVERY part of the testing format, I figured it was going to affect me as well in the next exam. It was also not fair! I even heard someone propose a multiple choice take-home exam. At that moment, my approach changed into collaborating more with the class discussion. I didn't want to get rid of "multiple-multiple choice" because it made it possible for me to obtain more points than the regular multiple choice format. I didn't want to get rid of the essay because it was a free format that could give me partial credit even if I had not answered every part of the essay correctly.
Participating was great and it gave me some sort of say, but it didn't always work to my advantage. When the class was asked how they felt about curving the grade instead of extra credit, I was probably the only one who wanted to keep the curve. I don't think anybody else realized that the curve would've been a better choice at the time due to the fact that we weren't deciding how much extra credit we would be receiving instead. We could've gotten 5 extra credit points when the curve would've improved some of our grades much more than that. Even though I didn't need the curve, I was just disappointed at such quick decision-making without considering all of the facts. By the end, I felt myself avoiding the discussion. I was discouraged and didn't want to participate anymore. At times, when I rose my hand to object something, it was ignored. I no longer saw the point of it.
Perhaps if I had been much more assertive and would've used the "compete to win" approach, I would've seen a result that I agreed with. However, the end results weren't so bad themselves. It was a fair decision at the end and I think the time limit on the decision-making made it all the more difficult and rushed. Perhaps if there hadn't been a time limit, our decision would've came to us quicker.
-Pam
We all felt frustrated and wanted to give p. Believe me, I didn't want to keep my initial exam score either. . .I'm just glad we were given the opportunity to change it, despite how chaotic it originally was, we all got through it and did better later on.
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