Yesterday we began an exercise we performed last semester, and I had completely forgotten about it: reviewing examination questions from the regional colleges/study centers. At first, I found this a bit alarming, since we don’t know what the lecturers are teaching, though I think that the rationale is that they are using our syllabi, and it is incumbent upon us to maintain the integrity of the examinations, as they are conducted under the auspices of UCU.
I can’t argue with that, though several times we did return to the “what is the lecturer teaching?” question. Obviously, we’re concerned with the diploma and certificate programs in theology, child development, and guidance and counselling. The dean tried to pass out exams as per our areas of expertise, and we critiqued the questions. Some of it is correcting typos/auto-correct errors, some of it is bad grammar, and some of it is poorly phrased questions.
It’s a bit interesting that we only do this for the study centers – I wonder if our own exam questions are reviewed by anyone? I now I had questions about some of the items that were put before us on an exam!
But yesterday, as with last semester, it fell upon me to make the corrections. I had *completely* forgotten about that part of the exercise. It’s a little stressful: the dean has to go to the Academics office with my flash drive to get the soft copy of the exams. I put them on my computer, and type away. Some centers are more systematic about how they file things: a smaller one just has one document for all the exams; another has files for program, degree, semester, course. Oy vey.
And sometimes we merge them: if two study centers are offering courses on African Church History, we will merge the questions so that they are offering the same exam. I still have questions as to why we do that, but for now, I just need to be sure that everyone has the right exams.
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