In a message dated 1/30/03 6:19:06 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >This is a good point. But it can be handled by giving the midterm less >weight to begin with. You have an argument for giving a midterm a lower >weight, but not a variable weight. And I do give the midterm lower >weight.
Indeed, one might take the logic to its extreme and use only a final exam for the grade (or at least for the exam portion of the grade), as do law schools and graduate tax programs associated with law schools. Having completed masters degrees in both taxation and history, I preferred having a final and no midterm, and used only a final for the exam portion of the grade during my first year of teaching at Iowa. The undergraduates loved having no midterm, but towards the end of the semester had substantially heightened levels of anxiety, so I switched to having a midterm and a final. In my undergraduate and first masters program days I tended to suffer from what I called mid-semester slump. I'd start out with the best of intensions, then get distracted and not perform particularly well on my midterm exams. For the finals though I'd study intensively and often pull off end-of-semester miracles, getting grades my instructors thought impossible for me based on my mid-term performance. On more than one occasion I benefitted from a higher weight to the final or even a variable weighting system which regarded the exit value (as my cost accounting professor put it) as substantially more important than any eariler value. In the tax program, which operated on the quarter system, I'd hit my slump right at finals, so having all the grade in the final exam actually worked against me there. I don't recall suffering the mid-semester slump during either my MA or PhD programs in history, though I must say that I found graduate level courses in history substantially easier than technical undergraduate courses. I have benefitted once and probably twice since the PhD program in history from professors who raised the weight of my final work over my midterm work, and I'm grateful. I had a former student ask me for a recommendation recently and looking back at my comments on his work I see that he got an A- rather than an A or even A+ because his early work was mediocre. In other words, I gave him a grade based on fixed weights, his later brilliant work notwithstanding. I've always said though that I wouldn't want to have me as an instructor. :) DBL
