I have just finished marking the final exam of one course. Other than multiple choice questions, there are also open-ended questions (short answer questions). Not that difficult or challenging.
How wrong I was? When I first marked few of the students exam scripts, I was impressed because they can use their own words to explain various concepts. So, I gave full marks for this. Then, as I read the answers of other students (by this time, it was the tenth student), I started to notice a decline of satisfactory answer. Am I being too strict because of the different time frame of marking? The first tenth were marked after sahur and the remaining ones were after I have started fasting more than 2 hours. No. It couldn’t be that. I was still feeling fresh and alert. Am I being affected by the noise of scam phone ringing? It couldn’t be it. I felt a bit annoyed but I took a break for a while before continuing marking.
I further read more exam scripts. Yup. I started to find that some students even left one or two questions unanswered. What went wrong? I guess, perhaps they cannot find any clue from the MCQ section. Well, a good question will not give hint of any answer to the other question.
When I looked again closely the five questions, well, the questions seem complicated but the answers to all of the questions are straight forward. It does resonate with this saying “sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple“.
So, why do students leave question unanswered?
There are many reasons. One of it is perhaps they might not have enough time to write the answers. Second, rather than writing a wrong answer, some might perceive that it is better not to write any answer at all. Third, they simply do not know the answer or don’t have any idea/clue to write anything at all. As a teacher, what should I do about this?