Students in Professor Stephen Chordas' Biology 101 class got a surprise two weeks ago - all 695 students received a 100 percent on their midterm.
Chordas and his staff dished out the perfect scores because they didn't have enough exams for 70 students.
For the first 20 minutes of the exam, Chordas and his staff scoured Independence Hall for the missing exams, then realized that there simply were not enough copies made.
Once students began turning in their exams, Chordas had to make a decision.
"At one critical point, a TA came out and said,'The first people are starting to finish the exam,' and at that point we had to make a critical decision. Obviously we didn't have enough exams for the class, people had already seen the exams, 70 people didn't get an exam … wow, what a disaster," Chordas said. "That was the point of no return. … The decision was made that if you showed up, you would get full credit."
Students in other Bio 101 sections this quarter aren't thrilled with the decision.
"It's frustrating," said Raffi Setrakian, a sophomore in finance. "You work hard for your grade and then you find out nearly 700 people get a higher score than you, whether they put in the effort or not."
Setrakian is not alone in his frustration.
Adam Andrews, the instructor of another Bio 101 class, and Caroline Breitenberger, the associate dean of the College of Biological Sciences, say they have received multiple complaints.
Most students just don't understand why it was necessary to give everyone a perfect score.
"Why not just postpone it until the next class and give a different exam?" Setrakian asked.
Chordas didn't think that would be fair to his students. "I couldn't have written a new test by the next class period. Plus, several students who had already finished the exam and had studied for the exam felt they did very well on it. So they would have been quite upset had I pulled their good grade and made them study and take a news test a week later," he said.
Breitenberger said staff considered other options, but they were eventually dismissed.
"We talked about just dropping the exam, but that would be unfair to those students who had worked hard and studied. Averaging scores over the entire quarter and substituting that for that exam would be unfair to those students who were counting on the exam to compensate for the fact that they had done poorly on labs or quizzes," she said. "Another possibility would be to fold the midterm into the final, but again, that disadvantages the students who set aside the time to study for that particular midterm."
With no other options available, Setrakian says it's only fair to give an equal amount of credit to the other Bio 101 classes.
"It's the same class, when people look at your transcript they will compare the course on an even plane, even though some students had a huge advantage. The only fair thing to do is give other classes a hundred percent on a similarly weighted exam," he said.
Andrews insists that what happens in other lectures does not affect his students.
"Every lecture section of Bio 101 is independent of one another. The only commonality is that we each have to achieve the learning objectives set for the course; how we achieve them is done differently. Dr. Chordas and I give different assignments, test in different manners, we even cover slightly different material," he said. "It really doesn't affect my students in any way."
Chordas admitted that the decision was difficult.
"It would have been nice if I had a couple days to think about it, but I didn't. In 12 minutes I challenge anybody to come up with something that nobody can criticize," he said.
Regardless of criticism, Chordas, Breitenberger and Andrews said all Bio 101 sections will continue as originally planned for the remainder of the quarter.
Richard Oviatt can be reached at oviatt.3@osu.edu.
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