I am proud to now consider myself the king of
douchebaggery.
Recently on reddit I stumbled upon a student who posted a
midterm his professor created. I believe
the midterm consisted of 50 questions – all of which were true or false. The answers to the test? All 50 were true.
The redditor just titled the post something along the lines
of “Mindfuck level = 100.”
Well, I gained some inspiration from this post. As our one loyal reader is aware, I teach an
introductory course here at my fine university.
I’ve noticed the occasional wandering eye during pop quizzes. Also, I’ve noticed that my students aren’t
the brightest. So I decided to take the
mess-with-your-mind approach to a whole new level.
In approximately 2 hours my students will be taking a very important
quiz. It makes up a fairly significant portion
of their grades. Unbeknownst to them, I
created two quizzes. Both appear to be
identical. However, if one were to
receive both quizzes (which one will not) one would notice that there are very
minute differences between the two. For
example, the word “no” will be strategically placed in front of one word on
Quiz A but will be left out in Quiz B. “Never”
may be replaced with “always.” (Antonyms
have always been my best friend.)
Each quiz consists of five questions and five questions
only. I stacked the quizzes in such a
way that the pile I hand them out in alternates between one quiz and the
other. Every correct answer to Quiz A is
“true.” Every correct answer to Quiz B
is “false.”
By alternating how I stack the quizzes, this ensures that
each student sitting next to each other will receive a different quiz. The result?
Say for example a student doesn’t know the answer to a question. So the student proceeds to have “wandering
eyes” and look at the answer the neighbor on the right put down. Then the student chooses to verify the answer
the neighbor on the right put down by looking to the neighbor on the left. Both the neighbor on the right and the
neighbor on the left will be putting down the same answer. That answer, however, will be different than
the correct answer for the quiz that the student in the middle is taking.
By using this process I ensure the following:
A) Cheaters get what they deserve.
B)
All students will start to question if they
somehow screwed up. “All answers are
true? This can’t be right, one of these
must be false.”
C)
After class they will talk with one
another. They will ask “What was the
correct answer to question 4? The one
about Gerda Lerner’s ideological contribution to feminist rhetoric?” For all students, question 4 will indeed have
been about Gerda Lerner. Half of the
students will respond that the answer was “false” and the other half will say
it was “true.” This will create genuine
confusion among all and will put the fear of God in them over the weekend that
they utterly failed a quiz worth a significant percentage of their final grade.
I know I am a horrible human being, but if you ask me: this
is totally gonna be worth it.
