Q: So, what kind of a take home final works? Does it work better in some disciplines than others? Have you had success with take home finals? Am I missing something pedagogically sound?
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
An Early Thirsty from Kimmie on Take Home Finals.
I have a bunch of younger faculty who offer take home finals. I've never done it. I thought it sounded stupid. I'm notoriously slow to consider alternative approaches, but it seems that in my cohort I'm doing the alternative thing by having my students come to the classroom for a final.
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I teach comp and lit. I used to have sit-down, in-class finals in my lit courses (at the beginning of my career more than 15 years ago). About 6 years ago, I decided on a take-home final for a big section (38 students) because I wanted to try it out. It amounts to 2 3-page essays. The whole class has to answer the first essay topic, and then they can choose the second out of a list of 3 or 4. The key for me is having them demonstrate mastery of the material--and so far, the results have been good. It's a lot more work for me at the end, but since I never did Scantron sheets in the first place, I've made my peace with it. I use a rubric, and since I don't have to comment, it actually goes quicker than grading a similar amount of work during the semester (say a 6-page lit essay). There is a very explicit "no using the Internet" clause on the essay (with a "0" F penalty if I run a search and find that they've ignored it) which keeps them honest. They use their notes, and the readings, and the stuff I've made available on the course website. The funny thing is that it's more work for them this way--but they'll still take it over sitting a 2-hour exam.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was an undergrad, the only reason I liked take-home finals was that they made it much easier to cheat.
ReplyDeleteFor the "essay" portion of my final in hamster sexuality I give them a take home. It works well for this class as it is an elective and the group is highly self selected. It also works because it give them time to develop their ideas and tie together a lot of different ideas/research/cultural diversity. I don't see a huge difference in the grades because my standards go up if you have extra time and resources. I still make 'em come in for the mulitple choice though! Sometimes I will "make a deal " with them - they get the take home portion-but it is "due" a day or two before the in-class portion of the final- which is nice for semesters when the lunatics who set the final schedule put all my essay-heavy finals on Thursday and Friday!
ReplyDeleteA take home sex ed final makes sense here. The classroom desks probably aren't certified for that type of use and, frankly, it's a little chilly in the classroom sometimes.
DeleteI use take-home finals almost exclusively, because the advantages are pretty substantial:
ReplyDelete* no handwriting mysteries
* no test-taking anxiety excuses
* fewer test-day snafu issues (car won't start, overslept, etc.)
* no proctoring
* more writing, but since students think of it as a test, they don't realize they're writing
* test is more realistically like actual historical thinking, instead of a brain dump
* higher standards, since they can structure their time, access their books, etc.
There are down sides, pedagogically:
* students often don't take it seriously as an essay assignment, treat it like a "write for two hours and stop" test.
* feedback is technically possible, with our online systems, but it's much less likely to be paid attention to.
* wikipedia, etc. (I have language in the instructions warning them about using the course materials first, but still....)
On balance, the take-home is still the better bet, pedagogically and organizationally.
Oh, I'm in history, by the way. We love essays, big questions, that sort of thing, so it's really an easy fit.
DeleteThat's really interesting stuff, Jonathan. I hadn't thought of some of those advantages!
DeleteSpeaking only as an ex-student: I prefer essay-type tests in take-home form because my handwriting is awful and I don't write well. I always have to review what I've written and make edits. Every time I write an essay in blue book format, I always come out of the class thinking, "Damn, I could have organized the essay better or I forgot to mention that aspect of the issue."
ReplyDeleteA math course might work less well in take-home format (especially in an online course). If the method of solving the problem has to be written out, I work more quickly with pencil and paper than with math software. Since math classes (for example) involve mostly right-or-wrong answers, it is much easier to cheat on a take-home or online course.
I've experimented with take-home midterms in upper-division math classes, with the idea I can ask propose more complex, integrative problems.
ReplyDeleteBut then I assume at least a few of the students will cheat in some way, possibly by getting help from someone, or online. To curb that, in addition to a short, Friday-to-Monday time frame, I end up feeling I need to create the kind of problem that only two kinds of people could solve easily: (i) those attending my lectures, and paying attention; (ii) a colleague. It's not that hard, since my approach to most topics is not easily found in textbooks; on the other hand, as you can imagine it is very easy to miscalculate, and end up with Putnam-level problems (a national UG mathematics competition.) So I've decided it's not a good idea.
Sometimes I ask students, for fun: "would you rather have a normal in-class test, or a take-home three times as hard?" Invariably they pick the in-class test.
Yes, I've used take-home exams, but only where they do the take-home essay portion ahead of time and then come to take the short-answer portion (usually generated from lectures and class discussion) during the final exam time. Or sometimes I postpone final presentations for the final exam slot, so everyone has to show up to do those (plus it's nice to have a two-hour slot).
ReplyDeleteIf you're looking to branch out, consider the following (if your discipline allows it): In some of my upper-division classes (meaning I usually only have 12-15 students), I mimic the comprehensive exams I had to take by giving them a take-home sheet of possible questions (like a study guide), and I offer two options: a final written exam (for those who do better at writing) in one of our proctored computer labs, or an oral exam with me (where they verbally defend their answers; these go quickly because people can speak much faster than they can type). I record those answers, but also take notes. I prefer the latter because I can give an immediate grade.
another historian here. I vastly prefer take-home essay exams to in-class ones. I want to teach synthesis and the use of evidence and careful consultation of sources, neither of which are easily (or well) done under three-hour-timed-essay conditions, especially with a closed-note/book format, and an open-note, open-book format wouldn't be conducive to a three-hour timed exam in a course with 4-6 books and hundreds of pages of primary source/supplementary texts. I resolve the internet issue by making it OK, as long as it's cited properly, and with the rule of thumb that they should cite course material whenever possible and appropriate (a major point, after all, is the demonstration that they have mastered course material, rather than the ability to do Internet searches) - but outside sources may be consulted to *supplement* course material.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to alleviating the persistent handwriting problem, I think it has resulted in better performance, and reinforces the importance of writing--especially revision and editing--as I expect "cleaner" results than I would with an in-class exam.
If I had to give an in-class exam, I would likely change the format from one-giant-essay to a series of short-answer questions that test specific concepts and connections between ideas rather than relying on texts and very specific evidence.
With Hamster Appreciation I really like take-home essays as in class, I teach them the rules of composition, design, history reflecting the product, etc., and assign an essay that requires critical thinking on their part plus proving it by examples. 90% of the time I get great results. The plagiarizers are usually caught via their writing style and by Googling suspicious entries.
ReplyDeleteGraduate-level physics classes such as Classical Electrodynamics (known universally as "Jackson" because of the textbook noted for its difficult problems) do lend themselves better to take-home exams. Many of the more interesting problems in classes like these are complex enough to require several days of calculating and thinking to solve. One-hour or two-hour exams really require "toy" problems, contrived for simplicity. The trouble is that my university requires that all classes have in-class final exams, regardless of subject material. I know, it's inane.
ReplyDeleteI used Jackson too, but I hear these days the "standard" is Griffiths. I often fantasize about using Jackson (or even Griffiths) as the text for an upper-division Partial Differential Equations course, "filling in the math" as needed. Too terrifying for the engineers, probably.
DeleteI don't give take-home finals, or take-home anything that's high stakes. It's obvious that a non-trivial percentage of out-of-class work has been completed by someone other than the student. (This regularly happens with the students who are enrolled in one of the special programs administered by our Student Retention Office. I suspect that the extra "help" is often brokered by one of their Professional Enablers.)
ReplyDelete