What Am I Doing Wrong?
When the multiple-choice question on my second year intro to marketing class's midterm exam reads
* * *
Before Sass has a chance to give them all a grade of Q-fucking-minus, as her friend Ace would say, Maria calls and wants to go to The Banknote for ribs. The students will never know what a close call they had.
Marketing is:and half the students don't know the right answer?
- developing new product concepts and improvements
- selling
- advertising and promotions activities
- planning and managing sales campaigns
- a philosophy that focuses on customer value and satisfaction
Before Sass has a chance to give them all a grade of Q-fucking-minus, as her friend Ace would say, Maria calls and wants to go to The Banknote for ribs. The students will never know what a close call they had.
14 Comments:
It's probably because they didn't study.
I'm not sure I know the answer. But then again, I didn't attend your class or read any of the course materials.
Although, on second thought, maybe that's something I have in common with half your students...
Maybe the Bright Young Things are spending too much time on Ebay looking at toasters and not enough time doing the coursework, hmm?
And if I were to hazard a guess- 4?
It probably means that you used different words when explaining this to them, and the poor dears are confused. Like dogs, students only know the sounds of words, not their meanings.
I'm with Blundering American. I don't know the answer out of those choices either. I would have looked for all of the above, because that's what the marketing departments I've worked with have done.
3?
You confused them all with numbers instead of letters for the multiple choices and they just didn't know how to cope?
Postmodern Sass asks, "What am I doing wrong?"
I ask, "Do you really want to know or is the question simply rhetorical?"
I smile knowingly.
Maria: Oh, they study, I know they do. It's thinking they seem to have a problem with.
Everyone: The answer is 5. The frustration comes from the fact that this is seven weeks into a course on marketing, and they don't know what marketing is.
Brian: Are you that lanky blond kid at the back of the room?
Well let's see... I was a marketing major, and for the past 15 years I've had to answer this question for my parents: "So... what's the difference between marketing and sales? It's the same thing, right?"
So according to my mother, the answer is: "Selling."
;)
*collective sigh*
Oh... Five...
Postmodern Sass - I am the Brian G. that "Postmodern Sass Appreciates:".
In fact, lanky, blond, kid and sits at the back of a room pretty much describes who BrianG is not. [smile]
It appears that half of your class is unaware that, statistically, in multiple choice questions, the choice with the most words (number 5) is most likely the answer looked for by the examiner. If half a second year class doesn't know that, then one is forced to ask: what is education coming too? [smile]
Cheers - Brian.
Jenny: This has got to stop. Seriously. If we're ever in the same place at the same time, the universe will implode.
Ah, Brian, I remember. And now I appreciate you even more, because I had never thought of the multiple choice answer thing that way. Just please don't tell my students!
I'm guessing that it's because none of the possible answers include long strings of jargon that have no meaning whatsoever.
Post a Comment
<< Home