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In my math department many professors said that as long as we can do well on the final, that will be the heaviest-weighted of our grades. It seems sensible, at
by yboris 5y ago
In my math department many professors said that as long as we can do well on the final, that will be the heaviest-weighted of our grades.
It seems sensible, at least at the college level, to have 90% of the grade depend on the (cumulative!) final.
- Auracle 5y agoI guess the one big gotcha is that if you’re having a bad day - you’re sick or couldn’t sleep the night before - that could really affect you negatively.
- lostcolony 5y agoWhile we're in the land of hypotheticals, it also seems sensible to plan for a makeup test for people who can't make the main one, and not make it require a signed affidavit from a senator, a doctor, and a notable charity to take that one.
- MikeTheGreat 5y agoI think this is one of the reasons why a lot of students prefer assessment models that reward 'effort over time' - taking 5 tests over 15 weeks helps reduce the downside of doing badly on a single exam/homework/etc. (Which is not to say that all students prefer this approach, but for those that do prefer it this is a common reason) Of course, this then leads us back to the problem of assessing people early on in the term before they've had a chance to build up some momentum in their knowledge & learning. But yeah - there's this sea-saw balancing act between a small number of higher-stakes assessment vs. spreading the assessment out & assessing earlier as well as later when designing assessments in formal education.
- bglazer 5y agoIt's also extremely anxiety inducing (for some people)
- yboris 5y agoOne of my professors (a jolly fellow) joked about us having "street cred" based on our past work. So if we've been reliably good at proofs, when another proof had gaps, he said he'd assume we knew but just went too quickly, but someone with lower "street cred" would just get marks off ;)
- sodality2 5y agoWhen I took my AP World History final, it was over five separate days, with no material overlapping (so you wouldn't get a benefit from seeing previous material). He told me grades more accurately reflected both perceived effort, and the grades from the last semester. (This was his internal final, not the AP test)