Fast students are smarter. Why avoid grading on that?

EDIT: Rate limited so: "smarter" here means how well the student will perform in a career in their chosen field. Fast + accurate is the ideal.

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eredengrin 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Fast students are smarter.

Assuming this is true (others have already addressed a few of the many reasons it might not be), wouldn't that imply that practically all existing tests are already flawed? If you want to grade on time, every exam should be graded with a formula taking both the time and the correctness into account. A binary "fast enough" vs "not fast enough" is about as useful as a pass/fail class grade.

The exams that felt like the fairest reflections of my own knowledge were proctored in-person, closed book, and time unlimited. Of course, being time unlimited works better for quantitative/engineering exams. I haven't put much thought into more qualitative/liberal arts type exams.

	▲	handoflixue 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In my experience, it was common to test speed - my favorite was solving 100 arithmetic problems in, I think it was 3 minutes? Perhaps shorter. The point was that it was basically impossible to solve them all, so it evaluated both your speed and your self-assessment: if you move too quickly, you'll make errors. If you spend too much time second-guessing yourself, you won't get enough problems finished. It always struck me as an ingenious way to get a feel for a new group of students, since it's quick to administer and equally quick to grade, while revealing quite a lot of information. Certainly we hold speed to some regard, since a lot of academic accommodations involve granting extra time. If we aren't testing on speed, then surely we should give that to anyone that asks?

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BeetleB 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Fast students are smarter.

Dubious assertion.

> "smarter" here means how well the student will perform in a career in their chosen field. Fast + accurate is the ideal.

Still dubious.

Also, I don't know where you work, but in most of my jobs, career growth is not limited by speed with which you do the work. It's one factor among, say, 10. Most of the people who got ahead were not the fastest.

They're not trying to gauge who is the fastest. Or even the smartest. Just those who have the skills. In the real world, you'll rarely (as in, never) have to solve those same problems with the same speed you will in the exam.

In a lot (all?) of the jobs I worked, taking a day to solve a Medium level Leetcode problem was quite OK.

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mlloyd 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are they? Or do they just have superior recall? Or maybe lack test-taking anxiety? Or write or type quicker or...?

Lots of reasons a slow student can be just as smart or smarter than a fast one.

	▲	llbbdd 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Those are all proxies for "is smarter". They have better memories, perform better under pressure, etc. Universities are meant to prepare students for the real world where these things matter.

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bzbz 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Define “smarter” —- already a vague and overloaded term.

And then consider whether the point of the class is to test smarts, or something else.

I’d expect that’s not the intent of most undergraduate degrees.

	▲	redwall_hp 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Arguably someone who is faster is more likely to just be recalling memorized things faster, while someone who's slower may have a deeper understanding but needs time to actually think it through. Memorization is already hacking the rules of the game that's supposed to be gauging understanding. An ideal test is resistant to rote memorization as well as outright cheating.

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davesque 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Care to explain?

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llbbdd 6 hours ago | parent [-]

See my other comment. I want my doctor/plumber/etc to be able to recall faster, type faster, work better under pressure. If you're better at those things you should get better grades and be paid more.

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davesque 6 hours ago | parent [-]

What if taking longer leads to a better result? Doesn't faster imply less thought?

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handoflixue 5 hours ago | parent [-]

People can have multiple values. Tradeoffs exist. Are faster ambulances worse for you?

	▲	davesque 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We're not talking about ambulances though?