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Taking an Exam or Boarding a Plane: When self-interested behaviors produce socially desirable outcomes
By Benjamin Passty, PhD I never look forward to giving exams. I suspect most professors share this view. We enjoy the activity of teaching, the performance, the chance to explain our insights to our charges every day in the classroom; nevertheless, something about judging these same students seems a little unfair. In a lecture setting, I feel as though I have complete control: The outline for the day, what goes on the board, even funny anecdotes are all things I can select, and over time–with experience–my ability to select the proper ones has almost become razor sharp. When it comes time to give an exam, I feel more like I create a monster that I then have to send out into the wild, with the students’ own inquiries representing my only opportunity to clarify and help them. The biggest problems occur at the end of exams. Some students continue working after time is called. Others take advantage of the TA’s being distracted by those students turning in their work in order to cheat as well. The last five minutes are inevitably a zoo. For a long time, I was convinced there must be a way to regain calm and control. As far as dealing with those last few minutes of an exam, I think I’ve found a method that works quite well: I give students extra credit for submitting their exams early. This works most easily by providing four points out of 100 to students who submit their exams by five minutes before the end of class. This has several desirable effects: • Many students find that it makes more sense to take those points than continue to work on questions in which they have little reasonable prospect of earning points • A fairly uniform stream of those students turn in their exams, instead of there being a big rush as the very end • Only a few students remain working on their exams at the end, allowing for easier monitoring of those students during the closing moments of the exam Students have reacted very positively to this regime: • It allows them to make honest assessments about their knowledge of the exam material as they proceed through the test • It gives them more flexibility in trying to achieve a desired grade, especially by giving them access to some extra points if the exam is harder than expected • It gives latecomers a chance to demonstrate knowledge for only a slight penalty relative to their classmates; I am firmly convinced that the process of giving an exam should provide every student with the chance to do this This method takes advantage of a core principle of Economics: Rational people (yes, in this case students are behaving rationally) respond to incentives. In this instance, however, it’s exciting that self-interested behavior on the part of the students also produces socially desirable outcomes, such as the ones listed above, exactly as was first noticed by Adam Smith–the father of economics–in his discourse on how markets work. While there are other cases (our economic crisis is the perfect example) in which selfish agents can cause enormous damage to society, it’s exciting to discover a time in the classroom when Smith’s result holds true. I related this method to a colleague recently as we boarded a Southwest airlines plane. While our desire to sit in aisle seats cut our conversation short, I couldn’t help but notice that Southwest Airlines starts boarding their flights only 20-25 minutes before departure instead of the 30-minutes prior boarding times of every other airline on which I’ve flown: Could it be that in their urgency to claim the last remaining aisle- or exit-row seat, selfish air travelers are actually helping one another? If so, then I think it’s satisfying that Smith’s observation holds true both in the classroom and behind the security checkpoint. Benjamin Passty, PhD Tags: Adam Smith, assessment, economics, exams, extra credit, flexibility, incentive, self-interested behavior, teaching Leave a Reply |
