I know our varied disciplines might make this hard to answer, but I wanted to ask about final exams
.Yesterday a colleague of mine and I sat down to talk about our finals. We teach the same classes in the same discipline, a course with a ton of reading and lectures, and we're both offering a final that includes as a major component, an in-class essay
.But, what we're doing to prep our students is different.
One of us is teaching a class before the final on how to succeed at "in-class" or timed writing. That person is going to re-cover some of the central readings, some of them which will be useful on the final essay exam. That person is going to suggest to the students the type of audience they should try to reach with the essay exam, the purpose, even the size of the essay.
The other of us is doing nothing to prepare the students. No review. No instructions save for what's going to be on the final which is something along the lines of: "Write an essay that pulls together central issues from the semester."
Q: Which approach is most like your own? Do you help students prep for the final, or is your final really a test of what they will do when faced with a challenge?
My reviews are somewhere in between. A lot of my final exams are take-home essays, so the discussion is more about what distinguishes a final exam essay from other essay assignments (an emphasis on coverage, mostly).
ReplyDeleteFor in-class essay exams, I usually distribute a study guide with questions - the questions on the exam are drawn from that list - so they can see in advance which material is likely to be on the test and can begin sketching out answers. So instead of "leading" the review, I give them time to ask questions themselves about form, content, etc., and let them fill in whatever isn't covered by the earlier handouts.
No, I don't waste class time on exam reviews. I'd rather spend it covering the course material. If they were in class they know what the important issues are. If they weren't in class, well, sucks to be them. Nor do I think my exams are "really a test of what they will do when faced with a challenge", rather than a fair test of the course material. If they know the material they'll do fine. If they don't, they'll do less fine.
ReplyDeleteIf I did spend a lot of time prepping them for the exam I would grade the exam differently, so their results would come out in the same range.
I only do a review/prep session for the one remedial class I teach. And I notice they write the heck out of that final and do well.
ReplyDeleteFor the regular college-level courses, I expect that part of the class requirement is to show their ability to gather information in a way that they can demonstrate on the final exam without my feeding it to them or reminding them of what to do or not do during the final. My content area does, however, allow for them to consult their sources (literature) in their final analysis, so that might differ from yours that may require a different subset of skills.
No review in class. That's their (the students') job. In my discipline tend to give standardized final exams (yes, I know, I know). Some of my colleagues in a different class give their students an older version of the final the week before the final. So, do their results mean anything? Anything at all?
ReplyDeleteI think, as a student, that it is helpful for professors to outline the level of "polish" they expect for in-class essays. Often, students will spend too much time crafting a flow to their essay, instead of churning out all of the really important points. Then time-management issues develop and meltdowns ensue.
ReplyDeleteI don't do a review of material, but I do generally spend some time talking about different sorts of writing and contexts - a research paper requires different skills and preparation than an in-class essay, which is different from a reflection paper, which is different from a book review, which is different from a lab report.
ReplyDeleteKnowing well the central themes and specific details from a given class would not (in my mind, or on my grading scale) be sufficient to do well on an essay exam. There's a certain rhythm to them, and certain conventions that students should be aware of.
While I wish I could expect college students to come in with these skills (and, let's be honest, a whole host of others), I've decided that if I want to grade them on a specific task (say, an in-class essay or a research paper or whatever), and it's not an upper-division course, then it's at least partially incumbent on me to teach them how to do what I want them to do.
So, very little content review; lots of talking about and practicing the skills I expect them to demonstrate proficiency in on the final exam.
Like Merely Academic, I don't really do in-class review, although if students have questions about the exam I'm happy to address them in class. I make a concerted effort, over the course of the semester, to make clear what the main ideas and issues are, and I continually draw connections between stuff we've already done, stuff we're doing, and stuff we're going to do, in order to make clear to students that there are some important themes and continuities that they need to be aware of in the course.
ReplyDeleteMerely Academic also said:
"If they know the material they'll do fine. If they don't, they'll do less fine."
While this is true to a considerable extent in my exams, and someone who knows the material will always do better than someone who doesn't, simply knowing the material will generally not be enough for a very good grade. I write my essay questions in such a way that students not only need to know the material, but they need to apply their knowledge of it in particular ways during the exam. They need to be able to make an argument about change and continuity, about differences and similarities, about relative importance. While someone who knows the material and disgorges the extent of their knowledge onto the page will likely pass, a high grade requires an ability to make a sophisticated use of the material to answer an analytical question.
don't you WANT them to do well?
ReplyDeletefucking sadists.
@Rick Frick: I think got it! Right there :o) We're all fucking sadists. Who you're fucking, on the other hand...
ReplyDelete@ Rick Frick
ReplyDeleteThanks for playing, but you appear to have completely missed the point. No one has said that we don't want them to do well. The point people are making is that we need to hold them to standards. I'd be very happy for all my students to do well; there is nothing easier and less time-consuming to grade than an A paper.
The question of whether to devote class time to review is a valid concern. On the one hand, review sessions CAN help students focus on the main issues and bring together the key aspects of the course. On the other, it's already hard enough to fit everything into the semester, without spending valuable lesson time going over things that they should have grasped the first time around. Also, when I have given review sessions in the past, I've always been worried that I was wasting the time of the better students, the ones who didn't need to go over the same stuff again.
Anyway, there is time specifically allocated for students who are having trouble with the material. I sit in my office for 5 hours a week holding office hours, and my students know that if they can't make those times, I'm happy to arrange a meeting at some other hour when I'm on campus. For the vast majority of my office hours, I sit in my office catching up on grading or messing around on the internet. Despite the fact that I constantly advertise office hours in class, and make clear that I'm happy to use them for individual review sessions, very few students ever take advantage of the opportunity. If the students who need help won't avail themselves of it, why should I devote valuable class time to going over things that we've already covered in detail?
@Defunct! Excellent point: I'm in my office 10 hours and the ONLY time students show up is when they're required to do so for mandatory one-on-one conferences to review their essays 3x a quarter. Even when I announce that I'm available for their fourth essay (their final exam), the only student who shows up is the ESL one concerned about having time to do the essay in two hours.
ReplyDeleteActually, am in my office way MORE than that, but have 10 hours listed! :o)
ReplyDeleteFrick:
ReplyDeleteI want my students to fail. That's why I make them buy a book, then cancel classes for the rest of the term.
Why bother with preparing lengthy, boring lectures and in-class, interactive assignments & discussions that many of them skip anyway?
I give exam reviews, very reluctantly. I feel I've been forced into doing stupid babysitting things (reading quizzes, in-class writing, exam reviews) by the students in the grade range B+ to C. Without the stupid babysitting things, they become C and D students (respectively) and freak out. Yet the stupid babysitting things turn the best students off.
ReplyDeleteWhat to do?
I personally don't really even like the idea of exams. I did my undergrad in English and took a ton of literature survey courses, and essay exams seem to be a universal requirement for survey courses. I think nothing is more disrespectful to literature than final essay exams; it implies that you can give an A level answer about a subtle, complex work within a two hour time frame. Give me a take home paper and I'll hand you something thoughtful, but ask me to give you a five paragraph essay on some prefabricated topic written in two hours? Bullshit. If you want to check that I read it fine-- give me some 'identify the quote' short answers. But essay exams?
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I am very against the idea of writing that is commodified. I'm an expressivist at heart. Perhaps literature professors think the ability to bullshit your way through an essay exam shows some form of critical thinking skills. To me it just further degrades literature in the minds of those outside the major.