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8. Final Papers seem to be more popular
So popular, in fact, that Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences consider finals the exceptions rather than the rules these days. In fact, any professor wanting to hold one has to submit a form asking for permission! Most just find the final paper a sufficient rubric for measuring students’ knowledge retention. Adding an exam on top of that just exhausts everyone involved with needless redundancy.
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7. Students who barely show up to class can still pass
Not all classrooms allow for this unfortunate phenomenon, of course, but the ones that do understandably frustrate students who show up every day and wind up receiving the exact same scores. Final exams who pull their content almost exclusively from textbooks pose the highest risk of rewarding the veritable Punxsutawney Phils on campus, so it isn’t their existence so much as their particular structure which causes problems in this instance. The easiest solution for professors hoping to reward pupils involves adding attendance to part of their grade, and throwing in final questions only covered in lectures and activities.
6. They aren’t the best gauge of skills
Probably the biggest complaint launched against final exams involves how they just don’t accurately capture how well students understand the material. Comprehensive tests in particular earn this criticism because topics covered earlier in the semester have already begun fading. A trend at Northern Arizona University saw professors edging more towards testing more throughout the course rather than placing much of the weight on midterms and finals. And the Arizona school is not the only one dabbling in this. Practitioners claim this practice serves as a far better tool for truly understanding where students’ unique strengths and weaknesses sit.
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5. Exhaustion
Both educators and their students find the final examination process – whether studying for or grading – mentally and physically taxing. This especially holds a negative influence over those actually taking the tests themselves, as the exhaustion may very well compromise their scores. Even the most competent, intelligent student flubs a few questions when his and/or her brain focuses more on its desire to rest. Hence the popularity of easing the weight off stressful midterms and finals and spreading the grades out a little thinner across the semester.
