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Exam question not covered in class

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  • 10-01-2018 1:25pm
    #1
    Pelvis
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,758 ✭✭✭


    I am just back from an exam and there was one part of a question worth 8% that was never covered in the module, it's not mentioned anywhere in the lecture notes and nobody recalls it being mentioned in class. However, the question has been in a couple of past papers.

    So my question is. Should a question be on an exam paper that isn't dealt with in class? This is a final year exam, these marks could be the difference between getting a first or not for the module and possibly overall.

    I will probably wait for my results first, but depending on my mark I may have to dispute this. Would I have a leg to stand on?


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    #2
    mickdw
    Registered Users Posts: 23,368 ✭✭✭✭mickdw


    Pelvis wrote: »
    I am just back from an exam and there was one part of a question worth 8% that was never covered in the module, it's not mentioned anywhere in the lecture notes and nobody recalls it being mentioned in class. However, the question has been in a couple of past papers.

    So my question is. Should a question be on an exam paper that isn't dealt with in class? This is a final year exam, these marks could be the difference between getting a first or not for the module and possibly overall.

    I will probably wait for my results first, but depending on my mark I may have to dispute this. Would I have a leg to stand on?

    Sounds like a very spoon feed degree if you expect all aspects of all exam questions to be directly dealt with in lectures.


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    #3
    BrokenArrows
    Registered Users Posts: 7,498 ✭✭✭BrokenArrows


    Pelvis wrote: »
    I am just back from an exam and there was one part of a question worth 8% that was never covered in the module, it's not mentioned anywhere in the lecture notes and nobody recalls it being mentioned in class. However, the question has been in a couple of past papers.

    So my question is. Should a question be on an exam paper that isn't dealt with in class? This is a final year exam, these marks could be the difference between getting a first or not for the module and possibly overall.

    I will probably wait for my results first, but depending on my mark I may have to dispute this. Would I have a leg to stand on?

    It depends on the question to be honest.
    If it is a whole topic that was left out then thats one thing.
    But if its just a natural extension to a topic that was already covered then you might be expected to make that connection yourself and learn it yourself.

    Can you post the question?


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    #4
    Pelvis
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,758 ✭✭✭Pelvis


    BrokenArrows wrote: »
    It depends on the question to be honest.
    If it is a whole topic that was left out then thats one thing.
    But if its just a natural extension to a topic that was already covered then you might be expected to make that connection yourself and learn it yourself.

    Can you post the question?

    I don't have the full question unfortunately, it was regarding Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and how it carries out authentication. It's not a whole new topic, we'd briefly gone over SSL/TLS but not PGP at all. As it's a technical question it's hard to infer an answer, I could answer if the question was about SSL, but as PGP is different and I didn't study it specifically then I don't know how it may differ from SSL, if at all!

    I am not saying all aspects of an exam question should be directly covered btw, there were other questions that were not directly covered either, but I could infer answers based on the general content covered.


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    #5
    Get Real
    Registered Users Posts: 903 ✭✭✭Get Real


    Pelvis wrote: »
    .....However, the question has been in a couple of past papers.

    ......these marks could be the difference between getting a first or not for the module and possibly overall.

    I will probably wait for my results first, but depending on my mark I may have to dispute this. Would I have a leg to stand on?

    I personally dont think you'd have a leg to stand on.

    The question appeared in previous papers. I'm sure it was to do with the topic you're studying. Unless it was a computer science exam and there was a question on Irish history.

    It may not have been directly covered, bit you say it could mean the difference between a first or second.

    These types of questions are included for precisely that purpose. A first would be worthless if it involved being fed slides and regurgitating the information on a page. It shows learning, but not necessarily understanding/that bit more to achieve a first.

    Now I hope you get a first regardless if that's your goal and hope that you did well in the other questions.

    Exam papers are deliberately tweaked to achieve a variance of results. If an exam has unusually high firsts, they'll tweak it to separate that anonamly. Otherwise a first would be worthless.


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