>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.
A long standing tradition in Britain (and the derivative Irish system) was for all weight to be on end of year exams (classes typically ran for the whole academic year). When I arrived in Ireland in 1992, there were only two exams that counted for arts students in standard three year degree programs: at the end of the first year, and at the end of the third year. The first year exams determined whether you went into the pass or honours stream of classes; the third year exams determined your graduating grade. Exams at the end of second year did not count; they were only a guide to the student's progress. This is patterned after the Oxford-Cambridge system. There, it appears to work. At my university, like most universities in Ireland and the UK, it was not working. When I arrived here in '92, I immediately caused a ruckus by telling students in the MA class that their grade in my course depended on weekly homework assignments and a midyear exam as well as the end of year exam. They were unhappy because it upset their traditional study method. Classes began in October and ran through the beginning of April. There was then a month long study break, and then exams. The library was virtually empty until the break, when the students actually started studying. Because no one studied until the break, it made it very difficult to build on material over the course of the year. The problem is that 18 and 19 year olds are not mature to understand the importance of regular studying. Oxford and Cambridge solved this problem by weekly tutorials with regular academic staff. They could get away with this because of heavy taxpayer subsidies. Like most places, my university could not, so we got students who did almost no work until the last minute. Not surprisingly, as the number of students has grown (from 1000 twenty years ago to 15,000 now), the system has shifted to increased use of half-year classes, and a lot more examining during the year. I might also add that third year economics options were a mess, because almost no one took intermediate theory classes in second year seriously, because the exams did not count. William Sjostrom +++++++++++++ William Sjostrom Senior Lecturer Centre for Policy Studies National University of Ireland, Cork Cork, Ireland +353-21-490-2091 (work) +353-21-427-3920 (fax) +353-21-463-4056 (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ucc.ie/~sjostrom/
