I had a senior make a presentation to me in support of her request for an alternative for a final exam. She didn’t want to “come to school to take an exam after school was over.” While I’m sympathetic to the feeling, I told her that I didn’t agree with her premise that “school equals classes.”
She had a reasonable proposal: do her ISP in the course, produce a detailed study/review guide, and do test corrections on things she’d missed during the term so she would “learn the material [she] should have learned.”
In thinking over her phrasing, I realized that she and I had different ideas of the purpose of the course (it’s an advanced math course). My response to her was the following:
Just as an addendum to your presentation, for me it’s more a question of learning to think with the material as tools rather than “learning the material.”
That’s why I try to have problems that require some thinking on tests/finals rather than just applications of things we’ve already done (or that students should have already done) in class…
