Writing Machines is the course website for English 170L at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
online finals
Submitted by a bird on 14 December 2006 - 3:48pm.
My suitemate is taking econ up at Harvey Mudd, and I asked her earlier today about her final. I know she's been studying for it, so I was being polite and asking when her suffering would be over (ie. the final time).
I was pretty surprised to hear "tonight at 6," knowing the structure of exam times during finals week. How could her exam be at night? Was Harvey Mudd on crack?
No, it turned out, not in this sense. Harvey Mudd is online. It seems as if an increasing number of their courses (according to my friend) have their final exams through some internet moderator site that does these things. They employ the honor system to assume you won't be using anything but the allowed notes, and then set a time for everyone to take it, in this case, 6 pm, and the site times the test. It quits the application after the allotted amount of time is up.
I thought this was way cool. The idea of taking a test from the comfort of my room is awesome. It's like what I learned in psychology this semester - you can recall information better in the environment in which you learned it. So if you did a lot of studying in your room, your room is where you want to take the test. It's a totally different feel than a take home test, though, in that you aren't given the test and allowed to mull it over. The one problem that could arise is technical problems, or internet overload on the test site (which I assume they have ways around). "My computer broke" could be a very handy excuse in this case.
But if I could take all my finals online, I would definitely do it.
This is almost totally
This is almost totally irrelevant to the point of your post, but the 5-Cs actually do have night finals: classes that meet at 4:15 and evening seminars have exams that are from 7-10 PM. They stink.
Eww, gross.
Eww, gross.
Afternoon seminars, too. I
Afternoon seminars, too. I know this because Tuesday evening, from seven to ten, I was sitting up at CMC taking a final on the Bible. It was, to put it mildly, a horrible experience. (When asked what would be on the exam the professor recited the syllabus: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings, Ruth, Ester, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Jonah, The Gospels, Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, and Revelation. The worst part: he was serious.)
I really needed to complain about that ;)