(from The Derek Bok Center for Teaching & Learning). Considerations About Exams When Teaching Remotely. Exams remain a popular form of capstone assessment. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is their efficiency— for students to review large swaths of the material covered over the entire semester with an eye to synthesis and distillation. By comparison with a research paper or other common forms of end-of-term assessment, final exams ordinarily have the distinct advantage of standing "outside" the term, giving students the impetus to reflect back on the totality of their learning without consuming significant amounts of in- or out-of-class time during the semester itself. With the move to remote teaching the ordinary boundaries between synchronous, in-class work and asynchronous, out of class assessment are already changing, and the extrinsic motivation of grades—on which, admittedly, final exams depend rather more than other, more generative forms of capstone assessment—has decreased significantly. Given these facts, how might you modify your plans for testing students?
