Exams

In the last four weeks of the term I explained the exam to my students (an essay for the MSc classes and a comprehensive essay and short answer exam for the PhD class). I'm now busy marking the PhD exams as I need to hand in their final grades at the end of next week. The MSc classes will continue next term and I'm allowed to sit on the exams a while (although, I'd like to get through at least one class next week).

As I'm looking through the exams, I'm seeing the levels of my students. I've certainly recognized a few students who really didn't pay attention to class. I've also noticed a few whose English skills are lacking, thereby making it difficult for them to answer the questions. In some cases, the students simply did not read the questions carefully--I know I reviewed components of a speech three times in class, and I lost count of how many times I mentioned primary and secondary research. It looks like quite a few underestimated the difficulty of this exam.

I've been impressed by some students' answers thus far and disappointed by others. Overall, I don't expect my students to do too poorly in the end. At this point, it looks like I may have two failures (they didn't participate in class, skipped presentations, and left much of the exam blank). I hope that as I re-evaluate (and slightly curve) the final scores of exams and assignments, I won't have to fail any students.