Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Only 12 out of 19 students who signed up for the Tuesday late afternoon exam showed up. This was after some students already asked to be moved to tomorrow's schedule because of conflicts with their other subjects.

In fact, the less than a dozen engineering students (some of which signed up to take my exam yesterday) taking up calculus had their exam with Maila from 415pm to 545pm in the hallway, with the students' chairs facing the railing.

This exam is different from the others I've made in that there are only two problems, but there are 10 to 15 items being asked for each problem. That makes 25 items total, which is assigned four points each.

A school of thought in exam-making discourages this type of exam because (as one of the students taking it yesterday pointed out) for some of the items, getting an incorrect answer in one of the earlier questions snowballs into a wrong answer in the later ones.

In fact, more than once in class I told them about the danger of using something they computed in another equation.

But what is my intention in giving this type of question? The list of required quantities they are supposed to compute is already a hint as to the sequence that they are supposed to solve for the quantities. They will get a substantial number of points (instead of the infamous partial credit) for each step completed. Each value they compute is rounded off to the specified number of decimal places instead of using the "complete" digits, thus removing the necessity that the final answer be within an allowed range instead of exact.

All formulas with more than three quantities were already listed in their test questionnaire. Even the trigonometric relationships they needed were given.

Yet the students (including most of those on the dean's list for last term) still had difficulty with the exam. Did the sheer volume of questions intimidate them?

Despite having had at least four and half hours of review sessions, were they still confused? As attested by the clarification asked by one student, she did not know if she was supposed to use the weight vector in a problem where the forces were shown from the top view.

Even my cousin was stymied by the value of the angle made by the hands of a clock when one hand is pointed at 2 and the other at three.

And I had the intention that this exam will be easier than the first one.

Unfortunately, today's exam will be slightly more difficult given that the students taking the test today will have had almost 24 hours preparation based on the assessment of yesterday's examinees.

That, I thought, was the advantage I'd give the early testakers: that their exam would be easier.

Or so I thought. More reflections on this tomorrow.