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 up to half the lost points for that quiz back 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 explaination 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 will generally come from the Comprehension or Application levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Higher levels are better, and more likely to receive credit. See Multiple Choice Questions based on Bloom’s Taxonomy 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.

Note that these alternatives are worth only half of the lost points. If you took the nanoquiz and got 8/10, then this makeup can bring your grade up to 9/10. If you missed a nanoquiz entirely and got a 0/10, then this makeup can raise it to 5/10.

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 roughly once a week. You will receive an email within a week or two about whether your submission was accepted.

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;
}