<p>James Engell, Gurney professor of English literature and professor of comparative literature, rose to suggest that the trend toward fewer exams was not a trivial matter. Last fall, the English department (he is chair) had just five courses that ended with exams. Whatever the merits of requiring just a long final paper, he said, it meant that perhaps nothing beyond the paper itself was being used to evaluate what students were learning. Given that many departments—English, history, classics, for example—have also given up senior-year general examinations, it is increasingly unclear how to answer the question, “How are we assessing students?” And given grade compression, he added, it became difficult to distinguish exceptional from ordinary work in the humanities. </p>
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<p>Harvard, and probably other universities, have made things progressively easier for students (and therefore professors, who don't need to deal with disgruntled students). Students who are not used to working hard are tempted to cheat when a course is more difficult than expected.</p>
<p>Actually, I suspect that much of the motivation is to make things easier for the TAs (or whatever they call them at Harvard) and for those professors who do their own grading.</p>
<p>Nobody enjoys marathon sessions of grading lengthy final exams on a tight time schedule, and universities often expect professors to have grades ready to turn in only a few days after the final.</p>
<p>If the last graded assignment in the course is a paper instead of a final, students can be asked to turn it in on the last day of class, which allows for a much easier grading schedule.</p>
<p>^Agree, and do you actually think you’ll have less disgruntle students with a paper than a test, quite the opposite IMO.</p>
<p>And which gives a better idea of in depth, critical thinking, a paper or at most short essays on a test?</p>
<p>I really don’t understand what the big deal is, I was an Anthropology major 30+ years ago and we regularly had papers for finals. And that was Cal, not H.</p>
Amen. The people looking for easy classes flee from writing-intensive requirements.</p>
<p>And why does a paper make it harder to evaluate the excellence of students? I would think an excellent paper would stand out more than good answers on an exam. Perhaps the concern is that the papers aren’t the students’ own work?</p>
<p>“Proctors” = Freshman dorm RAs, plus they also serve as freshman advisors.
“Resident tutors” = Uppclassmen House RAs
“Concentration” = academic major
“Secondary Concentration” = academic minor
“Dorms” = Freshman dorms
“Houses” = Upperclassmen dorms/residence colleges
“Master” = A professor who lives in a House with his/her family and oversees the House.</p>
<p>Not only it is not my experience, but it is also one that was NOT created to support the student. This is almost entirely to the benefit of the faculty. </p>
<p>Not only does the exercise tends to leave very little feedback, but it also adds the usual inconvenience to have the paper analyzed and graded by a TA/TF/GF/GSA (or whatever the fancy title is) whose qualifications might not beon par … without much of any recourse to the lecturer or professor in case of a disagreement. </p>
<p>This is really NOT as trivial as one might think for advanced classes, and is very different from introductory classes that fit a paint-by-the-numbers grading scale.</p>
<p>To be clear, the requirement to write extensive papers is a very good one, but not as the afterthought it often is. It only makes sense if the efforts by the students are matched by an equal effort by the graders and instructors. The practice to submit a final paper and only see “how it fared” through your posted grade is silly.</p>
<p>I agree and that was exactly my experience. The biggest problem was the lack of feedback. Rarely did the paper writing process include write, evaluate/feedback, and then a re-write. Without that feedback, I found the paper writing process almost worthless and easier than exams.</p>
<p>Not in the sciences – they all seem to have plenty of P-sets and exams…
Its also very possible to fill your schedule with small classes. Depends upon what the individual student is looking for.</p>
<p>When I was an English major at Wellesley, many decades ago, we NEVER had final exams in English courses. And the grading at Wellesley was significantly harder than the grading at Harvard at that time, since the average grade given at W was a C, and 70% of Harvard students then graduated cum laude.</p>
<p>When I was subsequently a graduate student at the U of C, we similarly did not have exams, but wrote long papers instead. (Actually, there was one exam: the master’s exam. It was the only piece of work that was graded anonymously. Interestingly, the usual grading hierarchy was overturned, and many of the guys who formed the favored group in that unbelievably sexist program were outperformed by many women [gasp!] and even MAT students.)</p>
<p>The idea that a written exam is more difficult than producing a long paper is simply ludicrous. It would be infinitely easier to go in for a 3-hour exam. It is also infinitely easier for a professor to grade exams than to read and comment on papers. This is a total non-issue.</p>
<p>BTW, we did not have any TAs, and we received extensive comments from professors. If you don’t want to have TAs in addition to established scholars, don’t go to a university. Universities are where the professors of the future are trained, and part of that is working as a TA. If you don’t want to be cared for by a resident in addition to an established specialist, don’t go to a teaching hospital. Same thing.</p>
<p>I’d also rather do a research paper then a final exam any day of the week. To me that’s a no brainer. Almost all of my 300/400 level courses in college were writing intensive.</p>
<p>I’d rather do a research paper as well. But I’m a writer, so of course I’d rather go with my strength. Writing a long paper doesn’t scare me at all.</p>