learning for life

Every 15 years I screw my students. At least this is what the statistics says: 30 years of teaching with two "serious attempts". No, I do not do this on purpose. It just happens when I make a serious mistake in the exam that leads to an unsolvable problem.

One of the cases was particularly nasty. It was in an exam for Advanced Microeconomic Theory; plenty of calculations with long and bulky fomulas. I put myself in the students' shoes and pre-tested the exam. And what should I say? I felt sorry for them because from class I knew that formula manipulation was not their most favourite activity. After all I wanted to test them on microeconomic theory and not on formula manipulation. So I decided to help them a bit. I changed the exercise and gave them an intermediate solution to let them check whether they are still on the right track. And then it happened: I made a small mistake with this intermediate formula, I just forgot a tiny little "²". With this mistake I managed to screw them twice. First, they did not get to the intermediate solution. Then, after wasting a lot of time looking for a mistake that was not there, they accepted it and proceeded from the wrong intermediate solution, only to realize that they would not get to the final solution either.

Gotcha! That is one way to look at it, but I actually felt embarrassed and miserable. I calculated all possible variations of the grade: one including the exercise, one excluding the exercise, a regular one with a bonus, and finally one with a partial inclusion. From the resulting grades, each student individually got the best possible option. In short, I did everything I could to avoid complaints. I succeeded. My conflict avoidance strategy probably gave each student a better grade than they deserved, but ok, I needed to feel less guilty.

A few weeks later I met one of the students. And I still felt bad about the incident. So I apologized again. "Oh," she said, "that was no problem. At my old university, things like this happened at almost every exam. So it did not bother me at all.". This statement set in motion a slow but inexorable thought process. Obviously, this student was better in dealing with life's inconveniences than others. And I began to wonder if a perfectly organized education system prepares our students so well for life. The world is full of surprises, seemingly unsolvable problems, failed plans, and so forth. The pace is increasing and with climate change and an increased potential for international conflict, the situation will turn worse rather than better. To deal with it, we need critical thinking, resilience, creativity, flexibility, a bit of pragmatism, and the valuable insight that plans may not work out. What could be a better place to teach these things than an exam (and to teach them "the hard way")?

An extreme surprise for students might be the following exam question: "We are very sorry, but your exam got lost on the way to this exam site. Therefore, please design and solve the exam questions yourself. The more challenging the questions and the better the answers, the better your grade will be."

I am not yet ready to implement such a surprise. Besides, no matter how interesting it might be, it would only be a surprise once. And it would be hell to grade properly. So I will continue to bother the students in the exams with what I always use: questions that require understanding and the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations, rather than memorized knowledge.

And finally, I promise to do my utmost to avoid mistakes like the one documented above. However, I will no longer feel overly embarrassed when they happen. Instead of feeling sorry, I will give the students an encouraging pat on the back and tell them: "Welcome to life!"