Nanoquiz Grading and Makeup

Nanoquizzes consist of multiple-choice, true/false, matching, and/or short answer questions.

For multiple choice questions, each option is worth one point. If you correctly choose the answer when it’s right, then you get one point. If you correctly don’t choose the answer when it’s wrong, then you get one point. This scheme applies uniformly to choose-all-good-answers and choose-one-best-answer questions.

• Consider a choose-all-good-answers question with choices A,B,C,D, of which only C and D are correct. If you answer C,D then you get 4 points. If you answer A,C then you get 2 points (since you were wrong about A, right about B, right about C, and wrong about D). If you answer A,B then you get 0 points.
• Consider a choose-one-best-answer question with choices A,B,C of which only C is correct. If you answer C, then you get 3 points. If you answer A, then you get 1 point (since you were wrong about A, wrong about C, but right about B).

The point value for true/false, matching, and short answer questions is determined by the staff. It is up to staff discretion.

Your total score for a quiz will be scaled to be out of 10 points.

We automatically drop the lowest 5 nanoquiz grades. If you’re dissatisfied with any of your nanoquiz grades, however, you can earn back some of the lost points for that quiz by writing a good nanoquiz question for the same class meeting.

• Your question must be multiple-choice, either “choose one answer” or “choose all good answers.”

• Your submission must include answers and an explanation of why each choice is correct or incorrect.

• Good questions are relevant to the reading for that class, straightforward to answer by someone who did the reading, and hard to get full credit on otherwise. Off-topic questions, trick questions, and trivial questions will not receive credit.

• Good questions should be of similar length and complexity as reading exercises or nanoquiz questions. Don’t use too much code, and don’t just make a small change to an existing exercise or copy text directly from the reading.

• Good questions will generally come from the Comprehension or Application levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Higher levels are better, and more likely to receive credit. See Writing Good Multiple Choice Exams (pages 21-25) for examples of questions at different levels.

Be sure you do a makeup for the right class. Nanoquizzes are numbered by the class meetings when they were held. If you don’t like your grade for Nanoquiz 2, then you should be offering a makeup related to Class 2.

An excellent makeup question can earn back up to 2/3 of the lost points on the nanoquiz. For example, if you took the nanoquiz and got 7/10, then an excellent makeup question brings your grade up to 9/10. If you missed a nanoquiz entirely and got a 0/10, then a makeup can raise it to at most 6.6/10. Makeup questions that are just adequate will earn back 1/3 of the lost points, and makeup questions that are wrong or don’t follow the directions will earn no makeup credit.

The deadline for making up a nanoquiz is one week (7 × 24 hours) after that nanoquiz’s grades are posted. Makeups may not be revised or resubmitted. Only one submission per nanoquiz will be considered. Makeup submissions are reviewed regularly, but at low priority. You will probably receive an email within a few weeks about whether your makeup was accepted, but it may also take until the end of the semester.

Submitting a Makeup

Here is the text of my question. Use backquotes
for `code` style, for example to talk about
`String` or `someVariableName`.

For multi-line code, indent each line 4 spaces:

    while (true) {
        b = a * b;
    }

How should we format the answer choices?

[ ] Incorrect choices have an empty box of
    square brackets
[x] Correct choices have a box with an "x"
[x] You can write a choose-one or choose-all
    question

> Write the answer explanation on lines
> starting with ">".
>
> Be sure to explain why each option is correct
> or incorrect.

while (true) {
    b = a * b;
}