I thought I would jump in with my thoughts about take-home exams. I have
given students "out-of-class" work in the form of take-home exams, papers
and projects for about 6 years and have refined some ways I handle them.
One thing I have noticed about all of the above types of out-of-class work
that count for a significant amount of work is that students will commit
more time to my class when they do challenging work. The time they spend
is far beyond what they spend on drill and practice homework (which they
also do.)
I can give them conceptual kinds of questions, and tougher skills problems
than is possible on an in-class timed exam. As a result, the questions
they ask in class go beyond just how do I work this problem. When they
synthesize and relate several concepts, they may ask questions like "for
this system of equations I got one answer using substitution and another
using graphing--is that alright since it involves different methods?"
Sometimes this brings up questions about mistakes in computations, process
and sometimes it brings up questions about round-offs.
To make my work easier, I collect one take-home test per group. I insist
on this because the take-home tests are long, involve writing and take a
lot of grading. The first time I graded a take-home test, I graded many
similar or identical papers and spent 12 hours grading. One time was
enough for that.
I do several things to try to ensure that a student does not get an
inflated grade for signing on the group work without doing or understanding
the work.
1. Students rate each other on their participation. I encourage the
students to be honest, but not necessarily vicious. I want to
know if a student did the work and participated in the
discussions. If all students involved, for example, say that
a particular student participated at level 3, on a scale of 0
to, that student is assigned 60% of the group grade.
2. I give an shorter in-class exam that tests skills and asks
conceptual questions that pertain to the take-home portion.
3. I sometimes have a grading policy that a student cannot make a
final grade for the course more than one letter grade higher
than her/his in-class test scores. (I adopted that policy after
one student and one group abused the group policy. For the most
part, riding on someone else's work, or letting someone ride
does not seem to be a problem.) I have different grading models
so I do not always use this model.
I have more often given take-home tests in the Calc-DE sequence and more
worksheets, papers, and projects in other classes.
Martha
Martha Haehl
Maple Woods Community College
2601 N. E. Barry Rd.
Kansas City, Missouri 64156
(816)437-3147