1.1.1. Kinds of questions – Technical matters
1.1.3. Frequently Asked Questions
1.2.2. Frequently Asked Questions
1.6. Frequently Asked Questions
Do not take or peak at any quizzes until you do! Once you “peak at” a quiz, you have to take it!!!
You are required to take required quizes.
Quizzes are located in the Assignments area. Their deadlines can be found in the Calendar/Deadlines area.
Each quiz consists of 4-6 questions. There are four kinds of questions you can be asked:
Note. There are two kinds of multiple-choice questions. It is very important that you learn to distinguish between the two types of questions. This will often help you in figuring out the answer!
· choices are marked by circles (as opposed to squares)
· you may only check one of the circles (the checked circle will move automatically if you try to check a second one)
· (Occasionally, I simulate multiple-multiple choice questions in one-choice questions by adding options such as “all of the above” or “answer #1 and #3” (abbreviated “1 and 3”). In other words, you really need to read all the answers before deciding.)
· graded automatically by WebCT
· choices are marked by squares (as opposed to circles)
· you may check many boxes (the checked box will remain checked unless you click on it again)
· In most of the questions, you are penalized for checking the wrong answer (you actually get negative points) so don’t guess or over-check
· graded automatically by WebCT
· You may be asked to provide a missing word in a definition or a characteristic passage, say.
· Fill the blanks questions are graded automatically by WebCT so you need to be aware that a misspelling or an extra space might be responsible for WebCT not giving you all the credit you deserve. You need to call my attention to this fact (by writing me a MAIL) so that I can give you full credit!
· You will have a couple of concepts on the left hand side that you will need to match with concepts on the right hand side.
· graded automatically by WebCT
There is an appeal procedure. You are strongly encouraged to use it. Read more about it in Appealing Grades (§1.4. ).
Required quizzes are graded automatically by WebCT. This is good because you can see the results immediately. This is bad because frequently you may have good reasons for giving a wrong answer. – This is why I strongly encourage you to go through the quiz again and see whether you think the answers marked wrong are marked so fairly (See Appealing Grades, §1.4. .)
10 points. If you earn 10 points this is tantamount to your getting a perfect A for the quiz in question.
No. The weight of the questions is not negotiable – it cannot be appealed.
You are given 30 minutes to complete each required quiz.
30 minutes is overgenerous. You will usually need much less time. However, remember that the quiz questions are difficult. So use this time wisely. You should read, each question a couple of times and carefully evaluate the answers! And remember, this is not a (bad) history course, where you just need to know when something happened or how to access the page of a book that records a fact. (Good history courses are not like that either.)
Here is a risky way of thinking about all this. “Oh, great! I don’t need to study. I will just sit down, turn the quiz on, read the question and then find the answer in the book.” I’d call this cheating. As always, sometimes cheating produces immediate gratification. It may actually be that you’d do well on one or two of the quizzes. But I would not bank on it! Some of the questions require subtle thinking and grasp of the whole material. There will be warm-up questions too, but the majority is not easy (unless you really know the material well).
The quizzes are not proctored (to save you money). Theoretically you can use any materials you want. To prevent flagrant abuses of the medium I have set a time limit on all the required quizzes.
I think it would be optimal if you prepared for the quizzes by writing up the answers to all the study questions. You can use those notes at the time of the quiz.
Extra-credit quizzes are usually more difficult than the questions in required quizzes. They will involve a fair amount of thinking on your part.
They will also be graded differently. I will award you for how well and how deeply you analyze a given problem or issue.
Extra-credit quizzes are graded by me. I will usually write up some comments on your answer.
Do not expect them to be graded right away. I try to go through the extra-credit quizzes once a week (usually around the weekend) but there are occasional exceptions to this rule. I will usually write up some comments on your answer.
See §1.5.
This question is inapplicable. What you earn on extra-credit quizzes is strictly extra. You can get a perfect A without taking any of the extra-credit quizzes.
You can earn up to 2 points per quiz. However, these points are harder to get than any of the points on the required quizzes.
Yes. But it is very hard. Not only must you reveal a command and understanding of the material (for which you rarely get any extra-credit points), you must reveal that you can evaluate the material critically, show that you have reflected on the issue. Sometimes, I will ask you to provide an opinion on an issue and support it with reasons. In such a case, you will get 0 points for the opinion (it does not matter from my point of view (as a philosophy teacher) what you think). All the points you get will be for how you support it, for the way in which you argue for your opinion (whatever it is). Your argumentation must be accessible to every rational person. I do not expect you to convince every rational person of the opinion you hold, but such a person must be able to see that there are good reasons for holding the opinion that you advance.
There are no time limits. Remember, however, that you can only take each extra-credit once.
You can use any materials you want. I strongly recommend using your mind J
There are two deadlines for the quizzes:
Since, unfortunately, grades are important, I trust that you will have the courage to speak up if you think that you have been graded unfairly. This goes in particular for the multiple-choice questions, which are always tricky and even more so in philosophy. -- It may happen that you understand and know the material well but have (for a good reason) chosen an incorrect answer, or at least an answer that has been marked as “incorrect”. When this happens, I need to know about it! You should:
What is crucial here is that you explain yourself well. There is no guarantee that I will change your grade but if you convince me that you got a point, I will. Otherwise, I will tell you why not.
When you are answering a question, you may be following quite a respectable course of reasoning and arrive at the wrong answer. When this happens and you document the course of reasoning (so that I can see how you may have thought an answer right), I try to give you at least partial credit for that. Sometimes, the grading scheme is unfair (there are glitches here and there, which have escaped my attention). There are real benefits to arguing with me on this.
This is not to say that I will always grant the challenger the point. But it is to say that I really care about being fair to you. If you think that a question (the way it was phrased, or whatever) was unfair, you should feel free to write me a MAIL. (All quiz challenges need to be directed to me -- they cannot go on the bulletin board because there are people who might not yet have taken a particular quiz.)
In the past, relatively few people have taken issue with the quizzes. Most of those who did were satisfied. Many a times the whole group benefited when I readjusted the grading on a question, for example. I had to ask myself why so few people do stand up for themselves. One suspicion I had was that students think that in challenging me they might somehow prejudice me against them.
Of course, prejudices are tough. -- I can assure you that I have none all I want, but in fact I might just not be aware of them. This is true for most prejudices. But I should ease your mind a little bit here. Philosophy as a discipline is done argumentatively. Everyone disagrees with everyone else. For philosophers, it is simply a matter of course that people disagree. If I ever was disposed to be prejudiced toward people who disagree with me, that disposition was lost when I entered the philosophical world. If I am prejudiced now (on this score) it is against people who do not disagree, who do not argue for what they think is rightly due them, who do not stand up for themselves.
Grades are unimportant. They really do not matter in the large scheme of things. Except that this is the first thing that your future employers will look at. This course may not matter to you. (I think you may not recognize that it might - think of various questions that your children may ask you.) But you are required to take it and it will affect your GPA. So you better take charge of that part of your life.
Fig. 2. Scores Page (result of selecting “Completed” from the Quizzes and Surveys Page). To see your quiz, select the link pointed to by the arrow.
Well, I have provided you with a sample quiz, which gives you an idea of the format and the atmosphere. You might want to experiment with it. The sample quiz is also the only one that you are allowed to take unlimited number of times.
Needless to say, the grade you get on the sample quiz is not going to affect your grade for the course.