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Show Taking a Gander m 'Final tests teacher' by Michael S. Robinson Well how did you do on your finals?I hope you used my rootbeer study method-it worked wonders for me. With finals over and a new quarter already in . session at the good ol' Ute tepee, those big Stations that count from 50 to zilch of your , grX are again a thing of the past. But they will, come again. (And it'll happen before you know it.) , The big question has always been: "How well did you do on your finals? But it seems to me that instead of asking the students, someone should go around asking the teachers. Teachers, how diyou do on finals?After last quarter, I'm already beginning to wonder if I shouldn't start a drive to pressure the school authorities into not passing out class evaluation cards until finals are over. I'm sure if evaluations were done on that schedule, mine would have been somewhat different. For most of us Utes, finals always end up changing our opinions of the teachers, and oftern the criticisms we make are amazingly valid. How did the teacher do on the final? One of the most popular areas of final exam discontent is in those classes where performance is taught. Performance is the only thing mentioned throughout the quarter, but when it is time for finals, things change. Suddenly students are faced with an exam based soley on a boring text, often worthless for a performance oriented course. I've heard this criticism many times. Speech students, actors, artists, musicians.. ..being tested on mechanics rather than the course objective: performance. Then there is the teacher from whom the students : learn absolutely nothing. For this teacher it is a real challenge to design a fair final exam. He must sit down and say "Hummm. What will I do for a final! haven't taught them anything, so what can I test them on?" Since he has taught the students nothing, everyone in the class still has an "A" when the big week rolls around. He must save himself the embarrassemtn of giving 100 per cent "A"... .his class would be swamped with students the subsequent quarter. It is this teacher who ends up giving the class i list of 100 books, including the author, copyright date, and publisher, and says, "This list. . .well. . .you will be held responsible for it on your final next Wednesday." Or he may assign a last-minute term paper and end up by giving final grades according to the correct weight of each paper-- as registered on his genuine springless postal scale. Take home exam There's another kind of teacher and another kind of final. He's the one who makes his students cram all quarter long and ends up by saying, "All right, I've really piled up work on all of you throughout the quarter, so I'm going to give you a break for your final exam." The whole class applaudes the mention of a take-home test. . .which ends up taking 16 hours out of a heavy finals week schedule. There are all kinds of teachers and all kinds of finals. Short, ' long, fair, unfair, difficult, easy, ridiculous, worthless; they come in all shapes and sizes. Ask yourselves, teachers, how you did on your finals. You may find that you deserve failing grades. Improvements are welcome. j |