Since finals were recent and many people are talking/writing about them (and since I hadn’t read any blogs for about a month), I am a bit late to CCDean’s party on “Final Grade Windows.”
CCDean has a point that I agree with in this particular post:
If it were up to me, the answer would be to do away with final exams as final exams, and to have classes run to the bitter end. But the folks who like to give “common†finals across sections don’t like that — they have a point — and the folks who effectively start vacation a week early would prefer not to rock the boat. Between the two groups, it’s hard to get critical mass for a change.
I think that I may be agitating for either two “common” finals for second semester freshman comp OR for identifying the exam as an “exit essay” worth 10% and NOT list it as a final exam.
Yes, I know that is rhetorically hiding the pea, but still… It would allow me as a rhetorician to focus primarily on rhetorial analysis and to do the final 10% of class on poetry analysis.