Random Musings

So in Brazil, it's perfectly normal to pass or fail a student on a single question?

Because over here that'd pretty much immediately be called malpractice.

At the school I graduated from some teachers have this practice. They are a minority, though, and they usually drown a student with basic questions.

...Good Luck!

The Physics professors in my university were fond of having tests with one question subdivided in 4 or 5 items. Each item would depend on having correctly answered the previous item. Those questions frequently made up about 40-50% of the whole test grade. Things could get... tense.

As for having a single-question test, I've had a few of those, but not many. The professors would usually be more generous and have the test being comprised of two questions instead.

Originally Posted by Dark Pulse

So in Brazil, it's perfectly normal to pass or fail a student on a single question?

Because over here that'd pretty much immediately be called malpractice.

Oh, from experience, it probably was a single question that happens to need most of the course material to answer, and should take at least one hour to answer it. Grading won't be pass or fail, it'll take in account how much he got right(at least, I hope it'll be like this).

As for the malpractice angle, try firing the ass of an university professor. Especially if he has tenure. It happened in my university, but it was: 1) A private one, meaning we were directly paying for the wages of the professors; 2) The guy managed to fail 89% of the students that were having that subject(some 200 people); 3) He still kept his job after that, he was merely sidelined - his ass got fired some time later(they couldn't fire him immediately, you know - that would mean keeping him for more than 20 years as a professor had been a mistake, and we simply can't admit that).

I've never encountered an exam like that - ouch.

One of my physics midterms was 3 questions long

each took about an hour to do (we had 3 hours)

fuck mechanical waves/vibrations

Originally Posted by My Little Username Can't Be This Long

One of my physics midterms was 3 questions long

each took about an hour to do (we had 3 hours)

fuck mechanical waves/vibrations

I feel your pain. I remember how poorly I did on the test covering that. Managed to get a pass on the course, but never again I was able to study so much for any single subject. A weekend day study session consisted of studying like crazy at a classmate's house from about 1-2PM until dinner time, than going to a nearby restaurant with the study material, and keep on studying after ordering until the food came. After dinner we studied until 11 PM, went home to sleep, and did that again if the next day was a Sunday. Weekdays we studied at the university whenever we had time.