Quizzes

Quizzes in this course are designed to promote critical thinking. They are not like the multiple choice quizzes you took in an introductory course that required looking up some fact from the required reading. In most cases you will not be able to answer the quiz questions by finding a phrase in the reading that is reproduced in the quiz. Research has shown that looking up facts contributes very little to long-term learning.

Completing Global Change quizzes generally requires some calculation or interpretation or analysis of reading, graphs or tables for that particular unit or one of the units preceding the unit for a particular quiz. So the quiz for Unit 2-3, for instance, may require some information or result from any unit in Block 1 or Unit 2-1 or 2-2. It will be expected that students have basic understanding of high school science and are able to think at the level of a university senior. So, for instance, if I ask a question about temperature in Australia in summer, you would be expected to use December-January-February temperatures and not June-July-August temperatures as a basis for your answer.

At the end of each quiz is a dialog box in which you can enter narrative on your reasoning if you want (not required). So if you disagree with my answers or can narrow the choices from 5 to 2 of the possible answers you can use the dialog box to explain your reasoning. This underscores the true purpose of the quiz - to encourage you to think deeply about the reading material and not simply to parrot back facts.

Because quizzes are designed to be challenging, scores typically are lower than most conscientious students expect to get, and this frequently causes anxiety. Mean quiz scores typically are about 2.0/3.0 but may be as low as 1.5/3.0. Some students will get 0.0/3/0. If this happens very often it may signal that your reasoning skills are not at the level required for the course. Every year there are students who score nearly 3.0/3.0, so the quizzes are not impossible or unfair as is sometimes asserted. If you are getting 0.0/0.0, the dialog box is your way of demonstrating that your reasoning skill is sufficient to understand, analyze, and diagnose the reading material.

You are not expected to take the quiz blind, i.e., without looking at the required reading, but you are expected to not discuss answers to the quiz questions with other students taking the course.