I *Actually* Got Work Done

I will confess to being lazy over the last few days. I've spent time celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday, working out, gardening, cooking, and playing Dominion, but I haven't gotten a lot of anything done since Sunday afternoon when I was reading in the car. I've opened my Google Drive several times and stared at the test I was trying to write, but I haven't successfully figured out what I was going to add to it in terms of exam questions.

Writing a good exam is a lot like writing a good poem - it has to be full enough of stuff to make people think, and not so all-over-the-place that it becomes a fruitless exercise in guessing at meaning. I wrote, deleted, and re-wrote the same test question about six times before I figured out how I needed to phrase them so that I could tell whether the students actually understood the reading or were just lucky guessers.

I have succeeded.

I am now essentially done with two of eight exams, though I still need to create rubrics for them, and I have a third one formulated in my head that I need to organize on paper. By the end of today, I hope to have another exam fairly well completed.

Some time this weekend I'll be getting together with a colleague to help her with some exam writing for her classes.