Student Sues Princeton Over Learning Disability Accommodations

QuantMech
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:08:33 +0000

On exams I give, I allow extended time for anyone who wants it. There are some limitations–it’s not like the Hawaiian marathon–students cannot go away, eat dinner, and come back to the exam, or sleep overnight and come back. I have moved groups of students from the lecture room to a smaller conference room, though, to finish the exam.

This works well, in its context. The exams are entirely based on problem solving, and there is a limit to the level of elaboration that makes sense in response to the problems.

I think that professors often underestimate the length of time exams will take, unintentionally causing time stress for all of the students. In the first math course I took in college, the math prof announced that he allowed a 5:1 ratio between the time it took for him to write out the answers to the exam questions and the time allowed for our class (and a 3:1 ratio at doctoral level).

I have found this ratio to be applicable in my subject area, as well–somewhat to my surprise. If I can’t finish the exam in 12 minutes, it’s not a good hour exam. (Seems like bragging–but as a Walter Brennan character used to say, “No brag. Just fact.”) Of course, I don’t have to figure out what I am asking in those 12 minutes, and I know how to solve the problems, it’s just a question of actually working out the answers.

The first students tend to leave my hour exams after about 40 minutes; those who take longest usually need between 2 and 2 1/2 hours. This seems fine to me.

There are a few issues of context that make it workable, though. First, my students have plenty of exams with time pressure, so I don’t particularly worry about helping them to acquire speed under pressure. Certainly there are cases where speed is vital, professionally. So if everyone allowed unlimited time, I might need to rethink my strategy.

Second, the nature of the exams I give does not make longer answers better, per se. An essay exam in the humanities would fall into an entirely different category–it seems to me that some questions I’ve seen on essay exams could be answered at publication length, if time permitted.

I had my first real experience with exam time pressure in seventh grade, in a history class. We had a short-essay exam, where we were supposed to pick a certain number of questions to answer. About 40 minutes into the exam, I realized that I needed to pick questions about which I knew less, in order to finish on time. I wouldn’t do that to students.