Quizzes

Because the reading is critical to this course, both for the material itself and to allow you to participate in the class discussions, I will occasionally (randomly) give quizzes on the reading assigned for the previous class at the beginning of class.  I intend the quiz question(s) to be easy enough that anyone who has read the material with attention or who has attended the previous lecture will be able to answer the question(s), and hard enough that those who have merely skimmed the material will not be able to answer.  If you find my questions unduly hard (or easy), please tell that to me.

Some generic quiz questions include:

• What are three specific things you learned from the reading?
• Name some of the people or concepts mentioned in the reading.
• What do you see as the major point made in the reading?

I use quizzes to give credit to students who come to class and come prepared.  Students who are not in class will receive no credit for that quiz, regardless of the reason.  (See also the Attendance Policy page.)  Quizzes are a measure of your presence in class, not of your virtue.  However, recognizing that students do deserve some flexibility in attendance, I exclude your three lowest quiz scores (out of approximately 10 total) from your final average, so in effect you can miss up to three quizzes without penalty.

Students who arrive too late to receive the quiz question(s) will receive no credit.  I do this because it becomes very awkward for the class to wait while one straggler after another answers the quiz.  Please come to class on time.

I have found it very helpful to give partial credit to students who, rather than trying to b.s. their way through the quiz, simply state that they haven't done the reading.  That gives them credit for being present, even if unprepared.  You can try to b.s., of course, but you run the risk of getting no credit at all if you guess wrong.

The quiz grading is imperfect, like all grading done by a human being.  I am generous in giving credit to people's answers, but remember that I don't start with the presumption that you have done the reading;   you have to convince me that you have done it.  The best way to do that is to be specific in your answer.  It will also help if your answer includes something more than material from the first page of the reading.

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