The Martlet

When the last class is done each semester, the only thing between most students and the bliss of vacation are final exams. But while many are bogged down with a full load, others have none at all.

This semester, of the approximately 1,600 courses offered, only about 700 of those have exams scheduled during the exam period — down from 752 in April 2008.

For December exam period, the number of exams scheduled dropped from 714 in 2007 to 654 in 2008.

Graduate, education, fine arts, human and social development, directed studies and honours courses are among those least likely to have an exam.

But professors in other faculties are also beginning to drop final exams.

“I do not have exams in the final exam period and have not done so for a number of years,” said psychology professor Jody Bain. “This is for a number of reasons, including ease of recalling information for students, fewer students missing exams due to UVic athletic commitments and marking requirements for myself and my teaching assistants.”

Michael Webb, a political science professor and the 2007 recipient of the Harry Hickman Award for Teaching Excellence, says that, though sit-down exams have their advantages because they encourage students to seriously engage in course material while keeping the amount of marking manageable, they also have their shortcomings.

“A limitation of sit-down exams is that they are necessarily limited in time and not very conducive to reflection and synthesis,” said Webb. “[A take-home exam] still requires students to engage with course material, but can be designed to encourage reflection on, and synthesis of, material and arguments from the course as a whole.”

As a result, Webb uses traditional sit-down exams for his larger lecture classes but prefers take-home assignments for his upper-level classes.

Valia Spiliotopoulos, the associate director of the Learning and Teaching Center, says that while her group encourages professors to use a variety of assessment tools to give students feedback about their work, final exams still have a place in many instances as a test of students’ knowledge and understanding.

“Exams allow professors to test at the end of the course whether or not a student knows the material, but at the same time they don’t give feedback to enhance a student’s learning,” said Spiliotopoulos. “Many professors are rethinking their role in that they shouldn’t just be providing students with a grade, but rather they should be allowing for more opportunities during the course for the kinds of assessment that give feedback to support student learning.”

The Learning and Teaching Center conducts seminars and offers advice for new and existing faculty about teaching university courses.

However, professors have the final say in the forms of assessment used in their classrooms.