Finals are fast approaching, signifying not only the semester's end, but also that it's time to buckle down and study.
These last barriers to the freedom of summer come in many different forms, like testing your agility with multiple-choice tests, or your endurance with essays.
We dread all exams, but each type has pros and cons.
Multiple-choice tests can be either laughably easy or brutally hard. With a writing-intensive major, I don't get to experience these much, but sometimes I wish I could.
Often it is obvious what the right answer is, like the $100 to $1000 questions on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" where the "D" option is often a joke — one that tempts me so.
Good test-takers tend to breeze through these easy multiple-choice tests in a fraction of the available time.
Nothing ruins a perfectly good multiple-choice test as much as multiple answer questions, especially when you don't know how many answers can be chosen. Also, these questions have an all-or-nothing point system although they are clearly designed to be suited for the partial-point scoring system — that way, if you are at least partly correct you can still earn points.
This would be especially good for the "choose the best answer" questions where all answers are right in one way or another, but one is somehow the best solution. Because a question like that is so subjective, it'd be unfair to say someone's idea of the best is completely wrong. We should be open to different opinions. In the case of the best answer, the instructor should just ask for a short answer or an essay to explain the best answer.
When you're not confined to a set answer and don't quite remember what the instructor said that day in class, short answer questions at least provide for a chance to write something fluffy and make it sound like you know what you're talking about. Short answer questions also tend to have the advantage of getting partial credit even for something fabricated if you're good at it.
But writing answers by hand isn't very fun for those of us who are used to typing pretty much everything we write. I have horrible handwriting, especially when I'm trying to write quickly to finish the test on time, so I run the risk of losing points because my instructor can't read my answer.
Furthermore, the thought of essay questions is enough to make my right hand ache. Multiple essay questions make it throb in pain.
I would think that in the digital age, we could ditch the pens and paper and write essay exams on computers.
Having the option of writing an essay exam in Word has so many advantages. Instructors can read the answers more clearly, many people type faster than they write so answers could be more complete, and it saves paper. Though this would be hard for classes in huge lecture halls, concerns about chearing could be addressed.
Tests in general aren't very realistic in preparing students for the future. In the real world we can ask others for assistance or look up an answer we don't know.
It would be best if learning had intrinsic value and motivation. However, because we are forced to take classes we don't care about, exams are the only way to make us at least skim the textbook and judge the amount of progress we have made over the course of a semester.
Monique thinks finals at 7:40 in the morning should be illegal when she doesn't normally have class at that time. Help her start a petition at: monique.devoe@asu.edu.
