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Exams

I'm giving exams in my three classes this week. I prefer that the exams not be redundant assessment so I try not to duplicate the kind of assessment I give in homework and projects.

For homework and projects, students have (if they start promptly) a great deal of time and access to support either through technology for computation and visualization or to guides (such as myself or tutors) to answer questions they may have.

For a timed exam, students have neither.  I try to keep my exams computationally light, and rather focus on their understanding of what they compute and why they compute it. Many of my questions call for short essays of a couple of paragraphs.

I've always hoped (whether or not this is successful) that my exam questions can teach, by asking the students to take a different perspective on our work in class.

For practical reasons I try to make my exams easy to grade, even if they are filled with essays and formulas. There is always a main point for an exam question that determines the bulk of the credit awarded for the answer.

Because my field (mathematics) isn't build on surprises, I let my students know ahead of time what specific topics I will be using for the exam questions. I outline the material and then use a random number generator on the outline to choose specific topics. The students have the outline well in advance of the exam.

This is a narrow facet of assessment but I hope that it complements the unconstrained homework and projects. I try to split the final grade average equally between the two.

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