Too much information?

For a while, I’ve maintained a website for the students in my chemistry classes. I put study guides, notes, solutions to quizzes and tests, schedules, and various other things on the site.

Shortly after redesigning the web site to use WordPress, I received this handwritten comment from a student on my instructor evaluations:

I feel that the students should get study guides to study with for the tests.

Where were the study guides?

http://[address]/?page_id=2

I’ve deleted the address of the site, since it’s a school site just for students. But if you’re familiar with how WordPress organizes things, you’ll notice that the page containing all the course study guides was the second page I ever posted to the site. (It was also the second link from the top of the page, just under the link to the course syllabus.)

By the time the class got to their first test, I’d added more pages. So I wonder – did this student just see the list of resources available for the course and just decide that there was too much stuff to bother with? What amount of resources is too much? What amount is too little?

3 Responses to “Too much information?”

  1. Kellie says:

    I think just actually posting the tests and exact answers would be most helpful. 😉

  2. Rick says:

    I actually experimented with posting a few of the actual test questions a few years ago. I randomly picked a few of the questions from each test and posted them on the course web site before each test. (Not the answers, though.)

    The students didn’t score significantly better on the pre-posted questions than on they did on the other ones. Make of that what you will. 🙂

  3. Billy (A Liberal Disabled Vet) says:

    One of my history professors in college (Professor Moriarty (seriously)) once gave a multiple choice test to my English History class. His multiple choice tests were notorious, because he asked for the best answer, not the correct answer (this meant he could give four technically correct answer and you had to pick which one was the most technically correct). As an experiment, he, before class, wrote on the right side of the board all the answers in order, but with no numbers (ie. ADCCEDDAABADD etc.). I noticed the letters, wondered what they were for, and began taking the test. Nine questions in (okay, I’m a little slow on the uptake) I compared my answers with what was on the board. We disagreed on one letter and, when I checked that question, decided the board was right. I then went through the rest of the test reading the question, the answers, picking what I thought was right, and then checking the board. Thirty questions in I decided he really HAD put the test answers up there and I skated through the remaining 70 in about 5 minutes (I did random checks, just to be sure).

    I turned the test in, and he said, “Please wait ’til the end of class. Don’t leave yet.” So I pulled out a Silverberg book and began reading. No one else finished the test in the time alotted. He collected the test and listened to the moans and groans about the test being too difficult. He said, “Well, I gave you the answers on the board, didn’t I, Mr. C——-?”

    “Yes, Professor Moriarty, you did.”

    “So why didn’t the rest of you read them off the board?”

    No one else noticed. I got an A on the test. The next best grade was a C.

    As good old Professor Moriarty said, “You can lead a student to the answers and they STILL won’t believe you.”