As it gets closer to the end of the semester, I start to get morequestions concerning final exams. The most common question is, “What do youthink about allowing students to earn exemptions from finals?”
Overall, I think the practice is counter-productive and should notoccur.
Exemptions are generally granted for two reasons, either to encouragestudents to attend class and/or to do all of their work to maintain a highgrade. Many teachers swear that the incentive works in both cases.
However, in spite of the bump to attendance and grades that exemptionsmay provide, they are bad practice. The primary purpose of a test or assessmentis to provide objective instructional data to staff. A final exam provides thisdata for an entire course (or semester). But if significant numbers of studentsare exempted from the exam, the data provided is suspect at best. Which wouldlead me to believe that the staff isn’t using final exam data for instructionalpurposes. So why exactly are the final exams being administered?
Which means that the real question should be, “Do we give a final examor not?”
If the exam data isn’t being used to inform course level instructionaldecisions, don’t give one. If the data is being used, make sure that the dataset represents the entire class. Then find other ways to encourage students tocome to class and turn in their work.
Think. Work. Achieve.
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