{"id":599,"date":"2006-09-15T09:58:34","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T09:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/15\/are-bloggers-smarter-than-high-1\/"},"modified":"2006-09-15T09:58:34","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T09:58:34","slug":"are-bloggers-smarter-than-high-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/15\/are-bloggers-smarter-than-high-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Bloggers Smarter Than High-School Kids?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As discussed last week<\/a>, the comments about the perfect-scoring SAT essays published in the New York Times<\/cite> made me wonder whether bloggers could do any better. On the plus side, bloggers write all the time, of their own free will. On the minus side, they don’t have to work under test conditions, with a tight time limit and a specific question to answer.<\/p>\n

Because we’re all about a rigorous scientific approach here at ScienceBlogs, we’ll settle this the modern way: with an Internet contest. Thus, we now present the Blogger SAT Challenge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

(“We” in this case is me and Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily<\/a>. Dave did most of the work, setting the test up in SurveyMonkey. I just consulted.)<\/p>\n

Full instructions are below the fold, but the basic deal is simple: Follow the link at the bottom of this post, and you have twenty minutes to complete an SAT-style essay. When the contest is over, we’ll put the resulting essays up (anonymized, of course) for peer review– that is, rating by other bloggers. We’ll even try to recruit some English types to grade them like real SAT essays, so you can find out just how your writing stacks up to that of the college-bound students of today.<\/p>\n

I warn you: it’s harder than you might think. If you think you’re up to it, click through and follow the link to the Challenge. Otherwise, go stick some meat products to a domestic animal, or something.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The New York Times recently published sample top-scoring essays from the new written component of the SAT test in order to show the type of work that was likely to score highly. Several bloggers, as well as the Times itself, have noted that the writing isn’t exactly compelling. So here’s the question: can you<\/em> do any better?<\/p>\n

We’re especially interested in finding out if bloggers, because of their regular practice in short-form writing, might be able to do better than our nation’s best and brightest high school students. So, without further ado, we present the Blogger SAT Challenge<\/strong>. We’ve prepared a (relatively) controlled environment where our victims<\/strike> volunteers can respond to a sample SAT question. <\/p>\n

Then the test will be scored in up to two ways: (1) ideally, if we get enough volunteers, we’ll grade the test according to SAT guidelines, (2) we’ll create a special blog where our readers will rate the essays on the 6-point SAT scale. We’ll then analyze the results to see how bloggers compare to college-bound highschoolers.<\/p>\n

You can take the test at your leisure, but there are a few rules:<\/p>\n

1. Don’t reveal the question until we’ve closed the test (at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, September 20). You don’t want to give your competitors an unfair advantage, do you?<\/p>\n

2. You will have just 20 minutes from the time you click on the link below to complete your response (actually we’re giving you 21 minutes so that you have a chance to read the instructions and fill out the identifying information). There won’t be a clock visible on the test page, but you are<\/em> being timed, and essays that go over the limit will not be scored. Yes, this is less than the 25 minutes that the highschoolers had, but they also had to handwrite their essays, so we think is the fairest compromise.<\/p>\n

3. The text box that our software provides is rather cramped, so you may want to compose your response offline using a text editor, then copy and paste your response. Just make sure you leave the survey window open while you work.<\/p>\n

4. You will have a chance to eliminate your essay from consideration after you complete your response. But please, for science’s sake, use this option sparingly. We promise not to identify the authors of the essays.<\/p>\n

5. However, if you’re pleased with your work, we will provide a way for you to link to it from your own blog after the study is complete. You’ll even get a nifty badge that you can post on your blog to proclaim your madd writing skilz. But don’t reveal your answer until we let you know it’s okay, after scoring is complete — we don’t want to bias any of the judges.<\/p>\n

Click here to start. Timing begins immediately<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, and one more thing: we *do* need volunteers, preferably college English teachers, to help score the exams. So, if you’re interested in that, please let us know, either via email or in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As discussed last week, the comments about the perfect-scoring SAT essays published in the New York Times made me wonder whether bloggers could do any better. On the plus side, bloggers write all the time, of their own free will. On the minus side, they don’t have to work under test conditions, with a tight… Continue reading Are Bloggers Smarter Than High-School Kids?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-blogs","category-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}