Reverse Final

My college is planning for a fully in-person semester with students vaccinated before they arrive on campus. There’s always the possibility that a student will still catch Covid and be required to isolate, assuming that’s the protocol (as it was this past year when a residence hall was set aside for this purpose). I’m planning to have in-class midterms and final exams, interspersed with some take-home annotated self-tests that have worked well, even pre-Covid.

 

Now, if a student has to miss a midterm, there have been various workarounds. If the student can schedule a time in my office to take it before I return the entire the graded exams for the whole class (a turnaround of two days), that’s fine. If not, I’ve sometimes given an oral exam, or sometimes lumped in the midterm grade into that student’s final exam. Rarely if ever has a student missed a final exam. If a major illness occurs, the student takes an Incomplete and schedules a time early the following semester to take the exam (written or oral).

 

But what if a student tests positive while being asymptomatic, required to isolate, and therefore can’t take the exam in person? I suppose I could Zoom with the student(s) while we’re all in the Final and send them a pdf; they would write down their answers, take pictures, and send it back in the allotted time. This worked reasonably well last semester when all students were in the same situation of all-remote classes; but I’m wary of doing this when most of the students will be taking the final in-person. (This wouldn’t just be for Covid or illness but for some other good reason the student might have.) I’d certainly want to discourage students looking for a way to take the final online rather than in-person.

 

Here’s my idea: Instead of taking the final exam, the student has to write a final exam. It should cover the most important things, and ask reasonable questions that could be solved in a reasonable amount of time. This forces the students to really think about what is important throughout the entire semester (which is also true for the students taking the exam). I would grade it based on how well it might match what I deemed important and what I expected students to be able to demonstrate on the final. Few students would want this option, so that should dissuade those looking for an excuse. It’s clearly harder than taking the final exam.

 

I don’t want to penalize a student who through no fault of their own, gets into a situation where they’re unable to take the final. And it’s the last day of finals. Or they are very ill. Or for some other specific reason. (They’re not common, but I have encountered them in my career, so I have some idea of the situations students could experience but I won’t elaborate here.) The Incomplete route is still a viable possibility here.

 

While I’m not planning on revealing such reverse finals as an option, I still plan to have students submit mock exam questions in P-Chem. I will be tweaking the instructions and expectations so they will be (hopefully) more useful this coming semester. I’ve never had a student miss a P-Chem final, but in G-Chem I have had the occasional student miss it for one reason or another. Also, the P-Chem final tends to be on the first day of finals week, so someone who misses it (usually if they get sick) can usually schedule to take it later in the week. G-Chem finals are spread across the week because we teach so many sections. This coming semester I will have one on the last afternoon of finals week. I imagine a student or two might try to argue for taking it remotely and I want to dissuade those arguments. The reverse final will be in my back-pocket if I need to pull it out, but I hope I won’t have to. In any case, I should write up the potential instructions/guidelines before such an event arises.