Final Exam is an MCQ

no comment

I've just found out that 60% of one of my final exams will be Multiple Choice Questions. The exam will be alot easier to pass than an essay style exam for sure. I've not heard of any other university/department/school setting the standard so low before.

Then again...maybe it's a ploy by the economics department to get around the problem of semi-literate students - no writing = no issue with literacy.

Garret

it cuts out a students ability to waffle, and just finds out whether you know it or not. Now if there wasnt negative marking it would be different

BKtje

Don't be to sure that it will be a cake walk.

Had a negatively marked mcq for geology in first year and it was very hard. Many questions came up that we'd never even covered.

po0k

Negative marking is an excellent tool.

dajaffa

MCQs are potentially damn hard. I won't shock you at how low I got, but suffice to say I had to make full use of the A+ I'd got in the continuous assessment lark.

random_banter

Is it a final YEAR exam or a 1st year exam?

I failed my first year economics mcq's, had to repeat in august! It can be very hit and miss... and that was without negative marking!

no comment

random_banter wrote:

Is it a final YEAR exam or a 1st year exam?

tis a final year exam.

I don't think it'll be a piece of cake but I still think it'll be easier to do well than an essay style exam. To do well in an essay exam in economics ye gota do some research maybe find some empirical info etc. MCQs requires a lot less work and thinking.

Also, the continuous assessment for the course was a take home MCQ - in preparation for the exam.

Vorsprung

no comment wrote:

MCQs requires a lot less work and thinking.

I don't think this is true at all, we have MCQs in every subject pretty much, the amount of second guessing I hear people (myself included) doing is huge, even though they only last an hour they can sometimes be quite draining.

How many questions do you have? What's the negative marking?

Chakar

bigjimthefirst wrote:

What's the negative marking?

Let's say each MCQ question is worth two marks. Negative marking means that for every question you get wrong, they deduct two marks from your overall mark.

Vorsprung

Chakar wrote:

Let's say each MCQ question is worth two marks. Negative marking means that for every question you get wrong, they deduct two marks from your overall mark.

Yea I know that, I'm asking if it's +1/-1 or something else

BKtje

Any mcq i taken in UCD was +1 for every right and -1/3 for every wrong.

Tan Princess

I think MCQs can sometimes be harder than essay exams I reckon.

Vorsprung

B-K-DzR wrote:

Any mcq i taken in UCD was +1 for every right and -1/3 for every wrong.

4th/5th/final med are +1/-1, we've also had +1/minus 1/3 back in the day

Cos88

bigjimthefirst wrote:

4th/5th/final med are +1/-1, we've also had +1/minus 1/3 back in the day

In my 1st year economics there's no negative marking......

I think MCQ's make the exam easier, especially for newbies to the subject like me.

breadmonkey

I'm surprised so many people think MCQs are harder (or can be). ANy I've ever taken have been very easy especially just to pass.

Stepherunie

I really hate MCQs. The anatomy ones i did with +1 -1/2 were generally foul and true/false which makes us second guess an awful lot of our answers.

The physiology ones I did were four stems choose the correct one. They weren't as bad I have to say.

Then Pathology one we did at christmas was extended matching questions which was 15 - 20 stems with five clinical questions where you had to work out from the information given what the correct stem was. That was actually the easiest type out of all of them.

delta_bravo

Stepherunie wrote:

I really hate MCQs. The anatomy ones i did with +1 -1/2 were generally foul and true/false which makes us second guess an awful lot of our answers.

Even worse than that are quantitative economics mcqs. The 5th answer option is always "none of the above". I hate that

panda100

Dont get me started on MCQ's!
I have failed almost every mcq Ive ever done and its not because I havent studied. They ask questions in such a way as to catch you out. Also you always have loads of time left at the end and go back changing answers cos the questioning confuses you so much. Then al the ones you did get right are cancelled out by all the ones you got wrong. Damn negative marking!
I always sail through essays and orals but mcq's are damned hard. I think its ridiculous them making up a large percentage of a final mark. You can only gauge how much a student actually knows by essay questions.

Tan Princess

I think so too Panda, I generally don't do that well on them but this lecturer is a lazy prick.

Breezer

bigjimthefirst wrote:

4th/5th/final med are +1/-1, we've also had +1/minus 1/3 back in the day

Oh you're not serious? How much of your final mark do they count for?

Vorsprung

Breezer wrote:

Oh you're not serious? How much of your final mark do they count for?

At a rough guess, I think about 15% of our final mark, that's in 5 subjects (7 MCQs in all)

Breezer

Ah that's not too bad. Ours are worth around 30 or 40% at the moment, hence the panic!

themole

Negative marking is just there to rule out guessing.

If there are 4 possible answers then the negative mark will be -1/4, as on average by pure guesswork you would get 25% without negative marking.

Then al the ones you did get right are cancelled out by all the ones you got wrong. Damn negative marking!

So, the above is not right. You would have to get as many questions as options wrong to negate a correct answer, ie 4 wrong to negate a correct answer out of 4 options.

Garret

someone previously stated they sat a +1 -1 exam, so every wrong one would cancel a correct one out

delta_bravo

Basically then, dont guess. Leave it blank

themole

Garret wrote:

someone previously stated they sat a +1 -1 exam, so every wrong one would cancel a correct one out

But what type of questions were they?

I believe in some med exams there is a question with several answers, more than one of which is correct. as in say, question with a,b,c,d,e answers where you need to mark T/F for each answer and say a,b, and c would all be true. For these types of questions to reduce random guessing a different negative marking scheme would be required.

Anyone sit one of these type of exams care to clarify?

Vorsprung

themole wrote:

But what type of questions were they?

I believe in some med exams there is a question with several answers, more than one of which is correct. as in say, question with a,b,c,d,e answers where you need to mark T/F for each answer and say a,b, and c would all be true. For these types of questions to reduce random guessing a different negative marking scheme would be required.

Anyone sit one of these type of exams care to clarify?

Yep that's it exactly, and they're the +1/-1 ones, so if you answer them all and you get half right and half wrong, you come out with 25%

Sarn

^^^ eh if you answer 50 right and 50 wrong with +1/-1 you end up with 0%. The T/F are +1/-1.

Traditionally a/b/c/d/e MCQs were -1/4. Negative marking though has been phased out in some schools. The theory behind removing negative marking is that female students are more risk averse and so negative marking goes against them, on the other hand men tend to be more inclined to take a chance, different cultural backgrounds can also influence this (I haven't bothered trying to find a source for this).

Ultimately it is at the discretion of the school/board. If you are particularly unlucky and haven't got a clue you can get an overall negative mark.

Stepherunie

Thankfully they never let us go below zero percent - something about feeling sorry for us I think.....

Breezer

themole wrote:

But what type of questions were they?

I believe in some med exams there is a question with several answers, more than one of which is correct. as in say, question with a,b,c,d,e answers where you need to mark T/F for each answer and say a,b, and c would all be true. For these types of questions to reduce random guessing a different negative marking scheme would be required.

Anyone sit one of these type of exams care to clarify?

Yep, all our exams are like that, but so far it's +1 -1/2, I guess they must change it as you progress in the course. Actually bigjim, on a side note, does the pass mark go up to 70% eventually? Someone mentioned that to me a while back, not sure if they were trying to scare me. This was when our pass mark was 50%, before they made it 40% to bring it in line with the rest of UCD.

Vorsprung

Sarn wrote:

^^^ eh if you answer 50 right and 50 wrong with +1/-1 you end up with 0%. The T/F are +1/-1.

That's why I'm not doing a business subject in college!