Thursday, January 16, 2014

Exam duration / syllabus confusion

The syllabus is not totally clear as to how long the exams are. The in-class exams will all be 50 minutes long, no matter what day they occur on. 

There is some confusion because my original (internal) schedule had all the exams on M or W, presupposing rather long exams. After rethinking it a bit, the exams didn't end up coming at natural logical breaks in the course material, and of course long exams just suck. At that point, I moved the exam dates around, putting most of the exams on Friday instead (so long as there was a natural conceptual break in the material), but forgot to update the syllabus. (One exam remains on a Monday because the preceding and following Fridays would make for awkward exam coverage.)

What the syllabus should say is that all four "hour" exams will designed to take 50 minutes, independent of what day they are on. For the one exam scheduled on Monday, you will still have a 50 minute exam, not a 110 minute exam. We will probably use the remainder of the 110 minute class period to review or do a short lab.

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