Evaluate the practice of giving final exams. A post on Daily Kos lays out the case against in-class finals, taking special note of the disability issues (the original, by Michel Bérubé, is here). I tried giving exams in my first semester or two. It didn’t work. Since then my course requirements include only essays of varying length, usually on topics chosen from a list of three or four fairly detailed items—nothing open-ended, which cuts down on junk and discourages fakery. Students typically have a week to ten days to work on the papers.
Grading four- or five-page essays is admittedly labor-intensive, though I don’t think it compares to a shift in the emergency room or twelve hours behind the wheel of a cab. Fortunately my department lets me teach our writing-intensive course for (typically a dozen or so) junior majors every year, and my other courses are also small enough to make essays feasible.
The end of term seems like a reasonable time to solicit opinions on exams: are they useful? are in-class exams unfair to disabled students? in philosophy is there any advantage to placing a premium on quick recall?
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