Girls just can't take tests

what's wrong with this study?

PhysOrg: Women can't pass tests as well as guys in "STEM" studies, but they do just as well as men, based on....exactly what?

they got anxious when they took the tests. Poor dears: They can't handle stress. So give them easier tests and other ways to show they know the subject, and voila, no problem.

They found that female students did not underperform in courses where exams count for less than half of the total course grade.

In a separate study, instructors changed the curriculum in three different courses to place higher or lesser value on high-stakes exams (e.g., midterms and finals) and observed gender-biased patterns in performance...

This is not simply due to a 'watering down' of poor performance through the use of easy points," says Cotner. "Rather, on the exams themselves, women perform on par with men when the stakes are not so high."

no, it is watering down the tests, unless, of course, you put the same type of questions a little bit at a time on the quizes.

and there is the implication that some of their grade comes from group activities, where women do well.

The researchers point to these varied assessments as a potential reason why the active-learning approach, which shifts the focus away from lectures and lecture halls to more collaborative spaces and group-based work, appears to decrease the performance gap between students.

Right. Women work well in groups. (not really: usually they are busy cutting down the nerdy kids or the ones they don't like)...

In "group activities", the theory is that each person adds their own skills into the mix, so everyone's input is the same.

The dirty little secret?

usually one person does most of the work, and the rest are freeloaders who get equal credit.

so the experts' answer: Make the grades based on fuzzy measurements group activities where they freeload on the work of the nerds (mainly guys but also girls like me) and voila, those snowflakes will pass with high marks and enter STEM fields.

Right.

But they won't, because this was an introductory class in biology, not an advanced class in engineering or biochemistry, where you actually have to do the work.

When I was in pre med, all the girls who wanted to go into med school (and most later changed their mind) became biology majors because it was... easier.

If you were a biology major, you just had to memorize stuff.

If you took premed, as I did, you studied physics and chem and biochem with science majors: stuff that included a lot of puzzle solving, while biology majors had simplified/memory based courses, where you didn't have to think, you just had to memorize stuff.

My conclusion: if they make "introductory" biology easier for snowflake types to get good grades, they are merely setting them up for failure when they get to the more complicated courses.