Haiku test question
Here's question #17 from last week's Environmental Geology final exam:
Which of the following haiku poems best describes the formation of oil?
Swamp plants leaf out green
then die and get squeezed, sans air.
Carbon gets more pure.
Plates skitter about
plastering terranes on front
like trucks with kittens.
Surface magma sweats,
devolatilizes. Its
fluids drop out ore.
Phytoplankton bloom
in sunny water then get
cooked and leak black goo.
Fossil fuels get lit
and oxidize; humans thrive.
Damn that CO2.
Not the most challenging question on the exam, but it was fun to write...
Other geoblogger instructors -- Do you amuse yourself (and your students) by injecting humor into exams? Is this poor form on my part? Is it genius? Weigh in. I'm curious to know whether this habit is ridiculous or common.
7 Comments:
As a student and a test taker, I enjoyed an unexpected giggle in the middle of an exam. But I was an unusual student in a lot of ways- I could never relate to test anxiety, and I tend to do very well on tests. My experience as an instructor suggests students enjoy (and really appreciate) humor in the classroom, but are a little baffled and disconcerted by it in an evaluation setting.
On the other hand, your test item is not so much humorous as it image-oriented. Do you do item analysis on your test items? This would be a great item to look at and see if it's one on which students who generally seem "with it," but don't test well, scored higher.
And a further comment on humor in evaluation situations: I think if more instructors used it more often, it would lead to students relaxing a little. I think everybody takes tests much, much too seriously, and actual learning and making connections not seriously enough.
Humor on exams = definitely appreciated. In a hard exam, it gives you a chance to relax (however briefly). My structure prof used to add song lyrics to his exams, which was always good for a laugh before you got down to the frantic writing part.
I usually restrict the humor to extra credit questions (where it can make students laugh without making them wonder if there's a catch). I had a structure class that went through a Chuck Norris obsession, so I asked them to tell me a Chuck Norris joke about the San Andreas Fault, the huge cross-section from lab, or... something else, I think. They enjoyed that one, I think, based on their answers.
I have a running gag on my Historical Geology and Dinosaurs exams concerning the University of Colorado at South Park. Poor Field Geologist Kenneth McCormick suffers all sorts of tragedies being transported back in time, fossilized, and so forth...
I always welcomed humor in tests. I find it is less disruptive during "brain dump" tests if it occurs at the end of the test though.
Almost every test I make has jokes of some sort in the exam. By the time the first test is taken the kids know me and my sense of humor. But I have never created a test specific set of haiku.
Humor on exams is a lot riskier in a multi-lingual classroom. I've had to cut way back. I made a little map including "Nacho Fault" last week and NOT ONE OF 200 STUDENTS seemed to get it.
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