It’s finals time in ye olde law school, which always has the law bloggers, students and professors alike, contemplating the nature of Exams. Prof. Volokh has some suggestions about, Why Law Schools Generally Grade Based on a Single End-of-Semester Exam, Prof. Althouse wonders Do law students know (or believe) that we lawprofs mean for the exam to be a rewarding educational experience?, and Prof. Solove chimes in, Examining Law School Exams
I’d like to offer my student perspective. Specifically addressing some of the points raised by Prof. Volokh in his defense of the practice.
First, Prof. Volokh notes, “[p]rofessors hate grading exams, and would thus rather grade one exam than two or more…”
There’s no arguing with that. I’ve never graded exams, but having taken my fair share of them I can imagine that grading them is a major undertaking. That said, I think Prof. Volokh is off somewhat here.
One of the reasons that grading a law school exam is such a major undertaking is because each exam deals with such a huge volume of information. One exam for the entire semester means that either the exam must be “deep” in that it asks students to deeply explore a few very important concepts, or “shallow and wide” meaning that it deals with the volume of material covered.
If multiple exams were given, the subjects could be somewhat more narrowed. So, the sheer depth or breadth required in a single examination wouldn’t be the same–which in turn might make grading them easier. So I think there’s a valid argument to be made that if Professors hate grading exams so much, a major contributing factor may be the exam format itself. Perhaps a few more exams might break up the monotony of grading a massive tome of an exam and make the experience a little less tedious.
That said, other Professors in other fields from math to English literature to biology have to deal with grading multiple exams and still manage to teach and complete scholarly work: why shouldn’t law professors?
Then there is the student viewpoint. Prof. Volokh suspects that students may prefer the one-exam approach as well. He notes that law students tend to be very studious (which in my experience is true) and that because of the competition and stress, if we were presented with multiple exams, we would study and stress just as hard.
I think Prof. Volokh makes a fundamental attribution error here. Yes, students stress over exams and a portion of that is because of the competitive nature of law school. However, I think a great deal of the stress also come from the fact that this is your one shot–blow this exam and your GPA tanks and every recruiter you face will think you can’t lawyer your way through a 12(b)(6) motion.
Of course students would take multiple exams seriously. However, I think for nearly all students the knowledge that with multiple exams you could have an off day and not pay dearly for it would provide a welcome measure of relief from the pressure of law school. Among my peers and study groups, I’ve found that the pressure we feel from exams comes far less from the competitive aspect than from the idea that if you blow this exam, you’ve blown *it*.
Think about it: is there more pressure to beat your classmate’s GPA by a tenth of a point or in the fact that if you have a cold and aren’t on your game for 3-4 hours one night, you’ve wasted an entire semester’s worth of tuition dollars and hard work?
Multiple exams would distribute that stress a little more evenly throughout the semester or quarter. It would also put student’s minds a little more at ease because of the increased accuracy in grading by having more points of data concerning a student’s mastery of course materials. Prof. Volokh poo-poos the notion of increased accuracy because of the increased stress caused by studying for more exams. Again, I think that is off-base. The increased stress of more exams is likely to be off-set by the knowledge that you are being assessed more accurately, rather than risking a semester of hard work and studying on just one exam.
I’m somewhat disturbed about the dismissive attitude expressed by Prof. Volokh towards accuracy. Should we not strive to be accurate in our work because it’s not as convenient? He notes that an increase in accuracy would merely rearrange the distribution of grades. Well, yes, that’s true. But it would rearrange them *correctly* to reward those who have a greater understanding of the course material rather than those who were “on” during the exam or who perform well under arbitrary pressure (which is valuable in some areas of law, but certainly not all). Shouldn’t that always be a goal of educational assessment?!
As to the idea of abolishing grades as a means of removing the issue of accurate assessment and relieving stress from professors and students, he notes that even schools that “don’t have grades” still have some sort of ranking system. I would counter that there are schools which do not have *grade disclosure*, which is one way to eliminate that problem altogether. And, yes, employers use grades as an initial screening tool, but that is yet another argument in favor of the accuracy Prof. Volokh so casually dismisses. Of course, he notes that most employers probably wouldn’t be troubled by the inaccuracy enough to care–but I would be willing to bet students would feel better knowing their grades were accurately representing their abilities to potential employers. Besides, is it the role of the law school to test for knowledge or to test for employability? I’ll leave that for another discussion.
Prof. Althouse asks “Do law students know (or believe) that we lawprofs mean for the exam to be a rewarding educational experience?” Speaking for myself, I’d like to say, yes. We know that _some_ of you mean for the exam to be rewarding experience. And some exams are very rewarding. Others, not so much.
I know I appreciate the effort put into constructing exam hypos which cover course material. It’s not easy. And personally, I find the experience of studying for exams to be very rewarding. It’s always astonishing to me when I start to outline just how much material I’ve absorbed during the semester. My exam study process involves reviewing notes and cases, but mostly outlining. For me, the outline isn’t about the result, it’s about the process. The process of a thorough outline is how I prepare for exams–usually finishing a day or so before the exam and then relaxing a bit. And the experience is rewarding. I feel good that I’ve learned so much and usually it helps my exam confidence. If the process stopped their, I’d be really happy. But the anxiety I feel about making sure I’m “on” for the exam goes a long way to destroying that experience. I tend to get so nervous about not having a “bad day” that a week or so before the exam, I start taking Echinacea, drinking lots of fluids, and generally “psyching myself up” for the exam. That’s not too rewarding. In fact, I get so paranoid I stop being rational in some respects. I always eat the same meal the night before an exam and the same lunch the day of exam. It’s not superstition, it’s habit to help me be more comfortable. I know so many students that have “exam rituals” it’s not funny–and I think it’s a manifestation of the stress caused by so much riding on the one exam.
I can also tell you that there are exams out there which are not rewarding in the slightest, and because Professors are individuals, most may attempt to create a rewarding experience, but there are certainly those who don’t. And there are personality differences. What is a rewarding experience to some might be hell to another.
But to answer Prof. Althouse’s question, I do think most students recognize that professors are not trying to torture them with exams. And if Professors really want the exam experience to be even more rewarding, then take a step to help eliminate some of the arbitrary stress so we can stress about the material: give multiple exams. Think about it, multiple rewarding experiences for you and your students.
To that end, I think Prof. Solove offers an interesting suggestion with the “take home” exam. (I should qualify this to say I have not had one of these yet in law school, but I have in other studies in the past.)
I think there is value to the take home exam, although Prof. Solove noted that in his experience, performance on the take home exam wasn’t better than the “in class” timed exam. I think there are two reasons for that: first, the nature of students to procrastinate–wait, I don’t think that is just students–human nature to procrastinate. The end result is that while students could have performed the exam spaced out over the 24 hour period, I’d guess many just wrote it in the 4-6 hour time frame anyway. The other problem is that even a take home exam does not eliminate any of the pressure or problems that are associated with the one-exam, one-grade methodology.
I think that personally, I would much prefer a page-limited, take home exam. It definitely fits my personal working style much better. (I like to be able to walk away from a problem, let it digest, and then return to it. I also like to work with some constraints to reinforce discipline in my writing.) However, I have no doubt that there are some students who hate this approach.
That, in my mind, is all the more reason for adopting a multiple test methodology. Even with just two exams, a mid-term as an in-class exam and a take home final (or vice versa) a professor could offer a style of examination suited to both types of students, relieve some of the pressure caused by one-exam/one-grade, more evenly distribute their workload in a more manageable fashion, and increase the accuracy of assessing course mastery. Now _*that*_ would be a rewarding exam experience.