11/21/2019, 18:47
Dear all,
We have been to the Education Coordinator and were encouraged to forward the request to the Examination Board. The response of the EB came today and states:
1. Psychometrics: "The Examination Board has reviewed the item analysis on the basis of the guidelines formulated for examiners with respect to the item analysis. Two of these guidelines concern the difficulty of the question and the RIT (correlation between the answer to the item and the sum of the other items). For the exam of Applied Methods & Statistics, the RIT was positive for all 40 items. Although five items were difficult (i.e., less than 30% answered the question correctly), the RIT for these items was .25 or higher (this holds for both the Dutch and English course), which indicates that the well-performing students more likely answered these questions correctly. To conclude, the item analysis does not point to the removal of one or more items from the grading."
2. Reevaluation: "In this particular case, the exam was peer-reviewed not by one, but three peers of the Methods and Statistics-department, including very experienced examiners. It would therefore not be useful to organize a reevaluation of the exam."
3. Mock Exam: "The Examination Board also compared the mock exam to the exam and concludes that the content of the questions in both exams is highly similar. The Examination Board, however, cannot objectively assess the difficulty of both exams, as both the exams and the student populations are different between last and this year."
4. Inspection: "The Examination Board inquired with the course coordinator whether you were given the possibility to check your own scraping card for the multiple choice exam during the inspection. According to the coordinator, you were given this opportunity."
5. Notes during Inspection: "The Education and Examination Regulations do not stipulate that students may make notes during this inspection. The Examination Board is therefore of the opinion that the lecturer has the freedom to decide that no notes may be taken into account. Moreover, the reason for not allowing students to make notes is to prevent examination questions from being copied, which is necessary to guarantee the quality of the examinations."
6. Failure rate: "The Examination Board would also like to point out that a passing rate of 54.2% for the first exam opportunity is not uncommon, and does not in itself raise any questions about the quality of the exam in question."
In conclusion, we achieved an inspection of the psychometric statistics by the examination board, which revealed (a pity for us) that there was indeed no flaw.
However, if some of you still want to proceed. We suggest to adress the following:
The Examination Board made the remark that:
"Nor your complaint below, nor the text of the online petition gives examples of exam questions which you think are incorrect, ambiguous, unclear, etc."
Therefore, if some of you still remember specific items, you may be able to (perhaps collectively) send them to the Examination Board.
Thank you very much for taking action with us,
We hope that future exams may be more fruitful,
With kind regards,
Luise & friends
11/05/2019, 13:07
Neuer Petitionstext: Dear Psychology Education Coordinators Ms Erkelenz and Ms Helmer,
we are writing this letter to bring to your attention something that we believe is unfair and requires attention.The subject of this Petition is the Exam of Applied Methods and Statistics, which took place on the 18th of October 2019. As mentioned in individual appointments with you, this course is generally believed to be one of the easier statistics courses.
**This year the exam was quite different to the mock exam and the passing rate was 54,2% in the English track.**
In previous statistics courses the teachers always announced after the exam that students are encouraged to write emails about ambiguous questions and that these will be taken into account in the grading, if reasonable and applicable to a number of students.
This year the teacher Sara van Erp posted an announcement stating that she will not take into account any complaints about the exam and will evaluate ambiguity with an item analysis. Given the relatively high failing rate and the fact that only 47 out of 177 students were able to achieve a grade higher than 6, it seems a bit surprising that the item analysis revealed no bad questions to be taken out of the exam.
Furthermore the teacher posted that the exam inspection (which is the only opportunity to discuss the exam) will be in 2 weeks, on the 14th of November. At this point there will be no chance to discuss the grading anymore. On top of that, Sara van Erp announces that no notes may be taken during the exam inspection. This means, all students who come there to review their mistakes are not allowed to write them down and make a plan how to improve themselves.
**Overall there seems to be lacking transparency about the exam, which is why we would like to ask for:**
1. An insight into the psychometric properties of the exam questions and the item analysis
2. An independent second evaluation by a third party on whether the exam needs adjustment of the grades.
3. The permission to take notes during the exam inspection and the guarantee for sufficient time for discussion.
Unterschriften zum Zeitpunkt der Änderung: 40
