Plotting And Presenting Your Course: The Test Plan: Fill & Download for Free

This one is an experiment conducted by Peter Nonacs, Professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at UCLA (Cheating to Learn: How a UCLA professor gamed a game theory midterm).On test day for my Behavioral Ecology class at UCLA, I walked into the classroom bearing an impossibly difficult exam. Rather than being neatly arranged in alternate rows with pen or pencil in hand, my students sat in one tight group, with notes and books and laptops open and available. They were poised to share each other’s thoughts and to copy the best answers. As I distributed the tests, the students began to talk and write. All of this would normally be called cheating. But it was completely okay by me.Who in their right mind would condone and encourage cheating among UCLA juniors and seniors? Perhaps someone with the idea that concepts in animal behavior can be taught by making their students live those concepts.Animals and their behavior have been my passions since my Kentucky boyhood, and I strive to nurture this love for nature in my students. Who isn’t amazed and entertained by videos of crafty animals, like Betty the tool-making crow, bending wires into hooks to retrieve baskets containing delicious mealworms? (And then hiding her rewards from a lummox of a mate who never works, but is all too good at purloining hard-won rewards of others?)Nevertheless, I’m a realist. Almost none of my students will go on to be “me” – a university professor who makes a living observing animals. The vast majority take my classes as a prelude to medical, dental, pharmacy, or vet school. Still, I want my students to walk away with something more than, “Animals are cool.” I want them to leave my class thinking like behavioral ecologists.Much of evolution and natural selection can be summarized in three short words: “Life is games.” In any game, the object is to win—be that defined as leaving the most genes in the next generation, getting the best grade on a midterm, or successfully inculcating critical thinking into your students. An entire field of study, Game Theory, is devoted to mathematically describing the games that nature plays. Games can determine why ant colonies do what they do, how viruses evolve to exploit hosts, or how human societies organize and function.So last quarter I had an intriguing thought while preparing my Game Theory lectures. Tests are really just measures of how the Education Game is proceeding. Professors test to measure their success at teaching, and students take tests in order to get a good grade. Might these goals be maximized simultaneously? What if I let the students write their own rules for the test-taking game? Allow them to do everything we would normally call cheating?A week before the test, I told my class that the Game Theory exam would be insanely hard—far harder than any that had established my rep as a hard prof. But as recompense, for this one time only, students could cheat. They could bring and use anything or anyone they liked, including animal behavior experts. (Richard Dawkins in town? Bring him!) They could surf the Web. They could talk to each other or call friends who’d taken the course before. They could offer me bribes. (I wouldn’t take them, but neither would I report it to the Dean.) Only violations of state or federal criminal law such as kidnapping my dog, blackmail, or threats of violence were out of bounds.Gasps filled the room. The students sputtered. They fretted. This must be a joke. I couldn’t possibly mean it. What, they asked, is the catch?“None,” I replied, “You are UCLA students. The brightest of the bright. Let’s see what you can accomplish when you have no restrictions, and the only thing that matters is getting the best answer possible.”Once the shock wore off, they got sophisticated. In discussion section, they speculated, organized, and plotted. What would be the test’s payoff matrix? Would cooperation be rewarded or counter-productive? Would a large group work better, or smaller subgroups with specified tasks? What about “scroungers” who didn’t study but were planning to parasitize everyone else’s hard work? How much reciprocity would be demanded in order to share benefits? Was the test going to play out like a dog-eat-dog “Hunger Games”? In short, the students spent the entire week living Game Theory. It transformed a class where many did not even speak to each other into a coherent whole focused on a single task – beating their crazy professor’s nefarious scheme.On the day of the hour-long test they faced a single question: “If evolution through natural selection is a game, what are the players, teams, rules, objectives and outcomes?” One student immediately ran to the chalkboard, and she began to organize the outputs for each question section. The class divided tasks. They debated. They worked on hypotheses. Weak ones were rejected, promising ones were developed. Supportive evidence was added. A schedule was established for writing the consensus answers. (I remained in the room, hoping someone would ask me for my answers, because I had several enigmatic clues to divulge. But nobody thought that far afield!) As the test progressed, the majority (whom I shall call the “Mob”) decided to share one set of answers. Individuals within the Mob took turns writing paragraphs and they all signed an author sheet to share the common grade. Three out of the 27 students opted out (I’ll call them the “Lone Wolves”). Although the Wolves listened and contributed to discussions, they preferred their individual variants over the Mob’s joint answer.In the end, the students learned what social insects like ants and termites have known for hundreds of millions of years. To win at some games, cooperation is better than competition. Unity that arises through a diversity of opinion is stronger than any solitary competitor.But did the students themselves realize this? To see, I presented the class with one last evil wrinkle two days later, after the test was graded but not yet returned. They had a choice, I said. Option A: They could get the test back and have it count toward their final grade. Option B: I would—sight unseen—shred the entire test. Poof, the grade would disappear as if it had never happened. But Option B meant they would never see their results; they would never know if their answers were correct.“Oh, my, can we think about this for a couple of days?” they begged. No, I answered. More heated discussion followed. It was soon apparent that everyone had felt good about the process and their overall answers. The students unanimously chose to keep the test. Once again, the unity that arose through a diversity of opinion was right. The shared grade for the Mob was 20 percent higher than the averages on my previous, more normal, midterms. Among the Lone Wolves, one scored higher than the Mob, one about the same, and one scored lower.Is the take-home message, then, that cheating is good? Well…no. Although by conventional test-taking rules, the students were cheating, they actually weren’t in this case. Instead, they were changing their goal in the Education Game from “Get a higher grade than my classmates” to “Get to the best answer.” This also required them to make new rules for test taking. Obviously, when you make the rules there is no reason to cheat. Furthermore, being the rule-makers let students behave in a way that makes us a quintessentially unique species. We recognize when we are in a game, and more so than just playing along, we always try to bend the rules to our advantage.Morally, of course, games can be tricky. Theory predicts that outcomes are often not to the betterment of the group or society. Nevertheless, this case had an interesting result. When the students got carte blanche to set the rules, altruism and cooperation won the day. How unlike a “normal” test where all students are solitary competitors and teachers guard against any cheating! What my class showed was a very “human” trait: the ability to align what is “good for me” with what is “good for all” within the evolutionary games of our choosing.In the end, the students achieved their goal – they earned an excellent grade. I also achieved my goal – I got them to spend a week thinking like behavioral ecologists. As a group they learned Game Theory better than any of my previous classes. In educational lingo, there’s a new phrase, “flipping the classroom,” meaning students are expected to prepare to come to class not for a lecture, but for a question-and-answer discussion. What I did was “flip the test.” Students were given all the intellectual tools beforehand and then, for an hour, they had to use them to generate well-reasoned answers to difficult questions.The best tests will not only find out what students know but also stimulate thinking in novel ways. This is much more than regurgitating memorized facts. The test itself becomes a learning experience – where the very act of taking it leads to a deeper understanding of the subject.

The most important thing to building up as a backup plan are additional skill sets that let you apply your technical skills to a wide set of topics. This is just generally good advice.Learning statistics is important for almost all of physics. This is necessarily taking courses, but learning about doing various types of statistical tests and how to think about error bars.I think it's important to learn how to program at a basic level. These days Python is really easy to pickup and is very useful in a lot of physics research. Get used to using libraries.Get good a presenting results with plots and graphs. Learn to make the look nice. You should be doing this for journals anyways, but don't think about it as garbage work, think about it as communicating your results.Learn how to write well. Spend lots of time perfecting your language so that you're communicating clearly. Taking complicated ideas and translating them into words is very challenging.Finally, learn how to give good presentations and get comfortable speaking in individuals and groups. This is a core part of academics, but is an important skill to have beyond it.These 5 skills that you should be developing during your graduate education (and beyond) will set you to be able to transition to a wide variety of technical careers. These include data science, engineering, science journalism, science policy, quantitative finance. There are physicists all over the place in professional settings.Generally physicists have a very low unemployment rate and the average salaries of physics majors are competitive with those of very applied disciplines like chemical engineering.So the key thing is to develop these skills and you won't be distracting from your physics career or diminishing your chances of succeeding in it. If you choose to leave an academic physics career, while you may not find any job that says "physicist" on the title, you won't have much trouble getting a rewarding and well-paid job. Though you shouldn't confuse this with saying that it will be easy, because getting jobs is never easy.

Before answering your question I need to know which test you mean. Is it the DP Chinese Language & Literature test or the DP Literature? It really depends because the criteria for assessment are different in these two tests. The specific tips can only be given based on your test type. In a word, you can start with criteria and overcome difficulties one by one to ensure you can be successful on the test.In short, there are IB Chinese tutorial courses available for students who want to score higher on their test.AS an IB Chinese teacher who has been teaching for years, I can give you the longer answer that you can try to follow on your own. Since I have taught a lot of IB students, I have the teaching experience to guide learners on this topic. I find that IB exams are a demanding test which has the ability to organize written language, which is tough for the examinee who usually struggles with 5 points and cannot improve it within a short time.One of my students educated in public school until 9th grade who wanted to take the IB Chinese exam had a good Chinese foundation. However, “good Chinese” did not equal a high score. Paper 1 troubled him a lot because when he wrote it carefully he could only get 5 points while casual writing might get 7 points.In the beginning, he seemed that he was confused about criteria of structure, language, etc., even with the assistance of my feedback and comments. Consequently, I found the reason is that he didn’t get enough understanding of paper 1.So now I’ll introduce the criteria of paper 1 in IB Chinese tests and how you too can do well.1. There are three genres in Chinese Literature Paper 1: poems, prose, and novel, which should be treated differently while answering questions. For example, image is one terminology for poems. When talking about novels, characters, narrators, narrative structure, sequence, and environment are important.Or test-takers can analyze it around three core elements: characters, plots, and environment. Prose is more complex for it should be interpreted according to different types such as Lyric, philosophical, and narrative prose. As for the structure, it could be organized according to the criteria.First, let’s look at the literature course in Paper 1: A: comprehension and interpretation. In short, the key is that test-takers need to understand the text. “The selective quotation of articles can support high-level and persuadable interpretation”. This sentence hints that test-takers should quote the original text in the analysis. As for how to be “selective”, test-takers need to find examples relative to the topic of the text, especially in some details, which will impress the examiners.B: the appreciation of the author’s choice. There are enough tips in the outline: in what extent the analysis of test-takers can present their appreciation of author’s language, structure, skills, styles, and choices which contribute to the expression of the topic”. So I ask my students to analyze language, structure, skills, and styles in different paragraphs of paper 1, and every analysis refers to more literature theories and knowledge.C: effective organization of opinions and clear logic. That is to say, if test takers organized it roughly and incompletely, he may lose his points. How is the clarity, flexibility, and precision of the language used by test-taker? (i.e. test-takers should avoid grammatical mistakes and show his fluent and clear expression and various sentence formats) In what extent does the test-taker choose the correct register of language, style, and terminology? (Here the register of language means the students’ utilization of language factors, such as vocabulary, intonation, sentence structure, and terminology.) i.e. test takers should analyze and organize with formal written language and terminology.2. Note that paper 1 in DP Chinese Language& Literature is different from the IBOP Literature course.Chinese Language & Literature is a combination of language and literature. In the language part, examiners focus more on the application of Chinese in daily life while in the literature part, the performance in literature is more important. Specifically, the two main parts: language and culture background and language and mass media are included in the language part while literature and background and literature and intensive reading are in the literature part.While teaching about language portion, the course explores how the author achieves his purpose with language under a specific context. And how language builds a coalition with other expressions in various media. The primary purpose of this part is to encourage students to know the meaning and connotation of media, internet, etc. by language.In the literature portion, students learn four literary works including poems, prose, novels, and opera. Two of them are taught as intensive reading material to teach students to appreciate literature from different aspects. Others will be analyzed from sociological aspects to teach students to express connotation of an era by language.3. The following are some tips for test-takers:Paper 1 is about analysis about given articles, which demands knowledge about rhetorical devices, expressions, language characteristics, and stylistics. Students need to be familiar with their features, applications, and expressive effects, which can make them score depending on whatever article they meet.Secondly, don’t ignore strapline. Test takers should response to strapline first and then write what they want. Actually there is a framework in paper 1 as a reference:1. The target audience and purpose2. Contents and topic3. Tone and emotion4. Literature skills5. Structure4. Analyzing based on this framework can ensure a good score. It is a good method for beginners. After more practice, students can write what they want and include those five points into their analysis, naturally. Then, the structure can be more flexible and also present students’ understanding and interpretation. Chinese Language& Literature is an interesting discipline that seems to be simple but needs great energy and time. Students can improve their literature with more time spent reading, writing, and speaking. If it is possible, watch plays or movies that were adapted from works of literature. It can also contribute to mastering Chinese literature.5. Extensive reading is demanding while preparing IB Chinese tests, so how you allot time and plan is very significant. Writing tasks in IB are difficult for test-takers. Parents can help a lot if they are also familiar with the course outline of IB by making plans and preparing the student. To get a good grade it requires effort from parents, students, and teachers. I had a Chinese student who went abroad in 8th grade, which meant his Chinese level was similar to native Chinese elementary students. But because of a solid plan and great preparation on the parent's side, he got 7 points on his Chinese SL tests. It was a struggle but it made me feel proud when I looked back to that period of helping him make plans.Aa teacher and also a Chinese examiner, I don’t want to see too many ‘templates’ in a passage. After all, there is no best way to write, the ‘templates’ may make passages too regular to be appreciated. It is important for test-takers to know that the high-scoring students are those who obey the criteria and at the same time write flexibly.I hope these guidelines and explanation will help you do well on your IB Chinese paper. Otherwise, seek help with a live Chinese instructor online. It’s may not be that you don’t understand the content as much as you don’t grasp the prefered structure. Get a little more guidance and you’ll do just fine.