Finals are right around the corner. We return from a leisurely Thanksgiving break and are hit with a tornado of final essays and exams. Students all over UMD anxiously await the final weeks of the semester, knowing their doom is in store.
A final exam is the last assessment for any given class. Some class finals take the form of an essay or project. In this case, students do not have to report to a classroom during “finals week” and take an exam. If you are not so lucky, you will be in a classroom for two hours struggling to make sense out of everything you have learned since August.
But is it really fair to test students on an entire semester of material in just one sitting?
Students have issues retaining material when they are balancing 15 or more credits of classes. Information goes in one ear and out the other, specifically after they are tested on a section of information. There is so much happening in a college student’s life that it is nearly impossible to memorize every fact learned in every class from every day of that semester. Come time for finals, many students struggle to reteach themselves the bulk of the material in order to do well on the exam.
Sure, finals usually have a greater weight on your grade than do the other exams, which is why some say they should be cumulative. It is also the last way a professor can test his or her students to see what they have learned and whether or not they had a good grasp on the class. But there is no reason for final exams to be cumulative, meaning they include information from the first day of class all the way up until the last day of class.
Most classes are set up where there are two exams spread out during the semester and a final exam at the end with smaller quizzes in between. The exams test students on the material learned up until that date. Finals, instead of following this model, test students on all material since the first day of class. Students have already been assessed on previously taught class material in their first two exams. If professors want to know how well a student understood a topic, he or she can refer back to the exam that corresponds with the given material. If a student failed an earlier exam, it is clear he or she did not grasp that topic. The earlier exams are a more accurate depiction of whether or not a student understood a portion of material because the information was taught more recently and there was less to focus on when studying for that exam.
Professors should move away from cumulative final exams and instead administer exams with only the information taught from the date of the previous test until the end of the class. In this case, students will likely earn better grades on finals because they will be studying less material that is more focused in one subject area rather than trying to remember what happened in class in the beginning of September and having to reteach themselves things they can barely recall. In addition, if a teacher wants to have a better understanding of how well particular students understood certain units, he or she can look at older exams, quizzes, and assignments. To see how a student did entirely in the class, just based on tested material, the teacher can average all of the test grades together to get an accurate depiction of the student’s understanding.
Changing the way finals are presented would alleviate much stress for college students everywhere. No matter the class or the major, students will likely get better grades on their final exams and therefore get better grades in their classes. It is simply unfair to test a student on all material from class over the course of five months. It is nearly impossible to remember all of that information when balancing other classes and activities. Students should have the comfort of knowing they will not be assessed on anything other than recent information so they do not have to endure the pressure of relearning copious amounts of facts and struggle to get an adequate grade.
