Teacher's POV: Why practise sets are not a good idea

Janta,

Have prepped and emailed solutions to all but 1 of the practice questions created yesterday.

Admittedly I was (and am) not keen on making either the practice questions or their solutions.

From a teacher's POV - the concerns are twofold - learning and grading. While the learning part isn't harmed by the practice sets, the grading part is now certainly more difficult.

IMHO, there is precious little leeway to make good questions that can test your mettle in MKTR_105 simply because while the 5 week course offers good breadth and scope, it doesn't always offer sufficient depth to permit the kind of testing I have in mind.

Further, it didn't help that we'd already bound ourselves into the "25% MCQ from these 6 chapters only" straitjacket. More flexibility lost.

So when I first heard that practice question sets are expected, I was like "What?! No Way!" because I didn't (and don't) think I would have much left to work with. Then the AAs prevailed that "no, practice exams are SOP @ ISB, they are totally done only" etc. I figured maybe I can tweak the questions I have sufficiently to make them quite disguised etc.

And then I was clear, "no solution sets!" Now I'd really have nothing left to work with and everybody will ace the exam!

Then this morning, the mailbox was full of student emails with this query or that. I figured it's less of a hassle to make indicative solutions that don't have to give much away. But when I actually got down to making solutions, I figured "Hey I'm already writing solutions, might as well do a good job".

So there you have it, the whole story.

My main concern now is that the class may be outside the optimal zone in terms of overall performance. I fear the class average on the project may be too low and on the exam may be too high making grading difficult in either case. Ideal situ a good variation in these critical course components - the project and the exam - that permits a natural ordering to arise.

Anyway, you have the solution sets now. They're fairly precise and representative of the exam non-MCQs.

Should anyone find any mistakes, wrong calculations, wrong logic or other such issue with either the questions or the solutions, do please let me know! Would appreciate it.

P.S.

Am away 11.30-8 pm today. Will be in office 8.30-10 pm in case people want to meet with any exam queries. I was in office quite a while yesterday but fewer groups showed up than had expressed interest in meeting over email. Anyway, over the next few days, I intend to be around as much as possible. Pls send meeting requests because they go directly to my calendar and don't rely on my admittedly shaky memory.

Sudhir