And so the course comes to an end. Getting ready for the final, I greatly underestimated the time I needed to make the final exam. The previous exams went relatively smoothly: the first exam had fewer than fifteen questions and the second was mostly done in an hour and a half of nothing-else-to-do. The final was scheduled to be two hours, so I had originally planned a seventy multiple question exam (plus a few short answer). As I wrote the questions, I fell behind schedule and made the test fifty multiple choice questions instead, along with the short answer questions.
The final exam has a different purpose than the previous exams, so I structured it differently. The midterms have the dual role of evaluating students so far and reinforcing the information for further evaluating later. In this situation, mixing up the questions so that the exam jumps around the lectures makes sense. Asking questions out of the order in which the material was taught discourages students from memorizing the material as a sequence of events. Instead, the students hopefully make connections based on synthesizing the material. The final exam is the end of the course, so I did want to wrap up the experience of cultural anthropology as the students leave this topic for whatever is next. This is why I thought that asking the questions in order from lecture one to fourteen was appropriate. There is some continuity across lectures, so this order does make some sense epistemologically. (It was also less time-intensive to not mix up the questions after writing them).
As the students took the final, I was reading the book on teaching that I had mentioned earlier. I was too engrossed in the book because I looked up to see one of the students trying to clandestinely look at a smartphone! I had a few options on what to do about the cheating. Instead of busting the student, I gave a general class warning about having devices out, which seemed to have spooked him enough to stop. From then on, I also kept a closer eye on the test takers to make sure that nothing else was going on. I thanked the students as they turned in their exams, and then it was just me alone with the three posters, which no one had wanted to take with them.
After the exams were turned in, I went straight to the Datalink grading machine so I did not have to return to campus later. I had the exams fully graded that night. Overall the class did well! I went fairly easy on the attendance and participation grades, which helped everyone. I have some thoughts on how to tweak the grading system. I plan to have a blog post about lessons learned and thoughts on future improvements.
I have a summer night course starting next week, which I may document week-to-week depending on how much free time I have. I’m teaching physical anthropology on campus for the first time, so there are a lot of preparations to make. I did not consider how much material needs to be made for eight hours of class per week! There are also logistical issues to consider as I need to consider the class’s stamina, as well as my own. On the plus side, having taught the course online last semester gives me a slight advantage. Thank you for following along as I taught my first classroom lecture course! See you after… some time?