We need to seriously rethink the concept of final exams

11 Comments

The title of the article is perhaps misleading. Michael Baumann is criticizing the IMPLEMENTATION of final exams, not the CONCEPT of final exams.

I agree that there are big issues about how we deliver both education and testing at Canadian universities. For one thing, the typical 2-semester/10 course academic year is counterproductive in my view – and students seem to agree since very few students at my institution actually carry this nominal load. As an undergraduate myself once upon a time, at an Ivy League institution, we used a quarter system with a nominal load of 3 courses in each of 3 10-week terms. The pace was fairly quick, to be sure, but it was much easier to balance the demands of 3 courses even when they had weekly labs (as most of mine did).

And, it is true that unfortunately many colleagues find it necessary to make tests and exams that are built around memorization and regurgitation simply to handle the number of students they are expected to evaluate. I believe that I am lucky to be able to test higher-order problem solving skills even for classes of over 250 students, because of the nature of my subject (Organic Chemistry). But the pressure to always “do more with less” is definitely working against educational quality and I can see little hope for positive change in the near future.

Very nice article!
Similar helpful ideas and suggestions can be found in the article below:

Haghnegahdar, Amin (2013) “Alternatives to Heavily-Weighted Final Exams in Engineering Courses,” Teaching Innovation Projects: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 2.
Available at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/tips/vol3/iss1/2

Michael Baumann is spot on. Traditional exams are largely passé. There are so many other options for testing knowledge. And cultivating knowledge, recognizing individual variation in learning, is a far more valid objective than testing. I hope his piece is widely read.

I agree with many of the points made against using final exams to evaluate students, and was looking forward to the author describing another system that was fair, effective, and practical, but associated with much less stress (for both students and instructors). Not necessarily an easy task, especially within the context 200-300 student courses with minimal grading support, and given the accessibility of digital resources (and temptation of cheating) for students these days. …Perhaps it might even be possible to rethink the entire concept of assignment grades in undergraduate courses, and move to a pass-fail model??

I was disappointed (and confused) to upon reaching the end of the article to discover that the proposed solution was doubling the number of exam periods (one at the end of the semester, plus another at the beginning of the next semester), doubling the amount of work instructors would need to put into writing novel, effective, yet practical-to-grade exam questions, and creating even more scheduling issues for students, instructors, and TAs (and administrators).

I’ve taught courses where final exams had to be rescheduled for the beginning of the following semester, and it was a nightmare. It definitely increased student stress; rather than being able to relax and take a real mental vacation during the between-semester break, they had an upcoming final exam looming over them the whole time. Additionally, scheduling a final exam at the beginning of the semester meant students had to juggle beginning new courses (along with potential other stresses and upheavals associated with the start of term) alongside preparing to write a final exam. Because it was the beginning of the semester (and classes had started) the final exam needed to be scheduled on a weekend. This created scheduling conflicts for some students, and took away weekend time that they might have been using for leisure and extracurricular activities, to catch up on personal or academic projects, or simply to catch up on sleep. Most of the negative impacts listed above for students were equally true for instructors as well as for students.

I support a few views and disagree with others. Relative to the ’embarrassingly small step’ of an optional delay and second exam date, there are a number of conceptual and practical problems. For the students, and the instructors, the final exam commonly provides course completion and subsequently, closure. I’m not enthusiastic about delaying the completion of the grading and the course, and the subsequent delays in the submission of grades will challenge aspects such as course advancement and program completion (etc.).

So some students can elect a longer period to prepare for an exam over others? And administration, professors, teaching assistants, proctors, etc., have to at least double the time alotted to the exam period?

The real world is full of deadlines, stress, and tests of knowledge. Coddling students is only going to make encourage self-entitled and less of an ability to adapt and be competitive.

I completely agree, it is so hard having a full time job and having my “boss” ask me to meet several deadlines sometimes on the same day, if not the same week. While most of these deadlines in the “Real World” (#barf), much like final examinations, are clearly communicated and scheduled before the term begins, it does feel out of touch to ask people to complete something and possibly push themselves towards a deadline.

Clearly cushioning the final examination process over 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks would directly lead to greater personal exploration and acquisition of knowledge. No need to think or site any evidence for such a profound conclusion.

If i’m not mistaken, the final exam issue is much less severe in writing-intensive, math-lite programs like history, humanities, and social sciences, compared to STEM programs. One of the biggest culprit of stress-inducing final exams is in Engineering programs (reads the Exam programs). The pass and fail of each course usually hinges on that one final exam that is worth around 50% (or even more). It is also not uncommon at all that over half of the students fail the exams and then the marks are then artificially adjusted just to avoid mass failing in the class. This article raises an important question that I have always wondered as well, why hasn’t students protested en masse?

Well one of the reason, from my observation, is that the average Engineering student simply do not know how to complain. Complaining takes quite a bit of skills, which we often forget. Usually, engineering students aren’t the best communicators. They chose a program that is English-lite, Math-heavy for good reasons! If you ask Engineering students to draft a well-reasoned complaint letter about why an exam was unreasonable or unnecessarily, it would be quite some hardship. Hence whatever complaint that does happen can be easily dismissed as whining and then the problem continues to worsen.

Greetings, many thanks to Michael Baumann for this very welcome comment. In my undergraduate teaching at UQAM I have done away with final exams altogether. Moving towards a greater emphasis on different forms of short and long responses to class content, essays but also formulating questions for the class) has given students responsibility and balance in managing their workload.

Thank you for that detailed insight, Michael. I feel the exact same way. My experience is similar to yours, having studied in Augsburg, Germany, and then came to Canada to do my MA and later PhD.
The undergraduate institution I work at has a policy that every course has to have a final exam unless a formal exemption is granted. We teach three and three or four and four, depending on whether you’re in the research or teaching stream. Needless to say, contract faculty teach much more. With no teaching assistants, I also find that my stress level increases incredibly at the end of the semester because of final exams. To make matters worse, we have three working days from when the final exam is written to enter final grades. In the winter term, the last day of final exams is often Dec 21. Thus, to make final exams predominantly multiple choice and machine gradable is very tempting.

Related to this article is the question of why universities refuse to permit students to see the results of the final examinations when they are available. I am constantly at odds with my institution about “hiding” grades from students when I want students to be able to access them so they can have immediate feedback. This practice simply adds more weight to the notion that the grade you receive in a course is the most important thing, far outweighing the actual learning, discussing, thinking, reflecting, questioning, etc. I find I love all my course and my interactions with students during the first month of a course; thereafter, once a test has occurred and some grades have been released, the whole feeling of the course changes because students suddenly become less interested in the material and more interested in the way I grade their work. There has to be better way!