gregh  2007-02-13 10:45  final_exams  Grading  Law_School   

Prof. Dave Hoffman of Temple wonders about the different exam review cultures.

Concurring Opinions: Exam Review Culture:

The basic story would go like this. At some schools - including the one where I teach - there is a strong culture of encouraging students to come to professors' offices after receiving grades to review the exam and find ways to improve their performance. To my mind, this is a very good thing - not just for students, who can be taught to do better on an economically consequential activity - but for professors, who can figure out exactly how badly written exams confuse test-takers. Somewhere between half and two-thirds of my fall semester class came in to meet with me over the last two weeks (at a half-hour a meeting). But, looking back at where I went to law school, I can't remember ever going to talk to a professor about my exams, nor any of my friends doing so either. Casual inquiry among conference participants suggests that a culture of encouraging colleagues to undertake individualized exam review is more common at schools outside of the traditional top tier.

Why? It surely isn't because students at top-tier schools lack incentives to get to know professors. And, I doubt it is because professors at elite institutions don't care about teaching. Nor, in the end, is it because exam review isn’t helpful, or because grades don’t matter at schools without a culture of review.

At USF, it certainly seems to be commonplace. I've never actually done it myself. I've picked up my exams on occasion. Ironically, only the good ones, to see just how good. There's always a lingering sense of embarrassment for me to go see a professor about a bad exam. (And yet, I'll happily talk to Prof. Osborn, who happens to have given 2 of my 3 worst exams, about just about anything but Contracts.) To some degree, I can put poor performance on procrastination, bad exam day, etc., and I just leave it at that. At this stage of the game, I'm not sure how much I'd gain from reviewing exams, anyway.

And then there's the one other bit. My friend who went to review his exam, only to have the professor discover it had been misrecorded to the benefit of the student. And the professor's next move? Why, of course, he lowered the student's grade. And it never would have happened had the student not gone to review his exam with the professor. I immediately knew I wouldn't be going to review my exam with that prof, and I think that was always in the back of my mind when I considered doing it other times.

One other point. The same student who had the grade lowered after the one exam was reviewed had a miscalculation appear on another exam in the same semester for a full grade bump! That was back in first-year. It made it very easy to become jaded about exam grading right away.