• RustyNova@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The exam is only one question

    The exam in question: “Write a 300 pages book in latin about the powerful application of gurtentor of a superencabolutator”

    • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Honestly, you don’t want a few question exams. My physics class in university had exams that were only 4 questions each. If you didn’t know how to start solving the problem, you were screwed. By far, the hardest class I took at university was because of that. People in that class changed their majors to not have to do more physics.

  • NielsBohron@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    As a chem professor who writes a take-home final every quarter, the multiple part questions are usually to make the questions easier (at least on my exams). The multiple parts generally build on themselves and are sort of guiding the students through the overall question, and if I write it to be a “single question,” students still have to do those same steps, but they have to figure out what those steps are and do that same work without being prompted.

  • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Or just a paragraph of eight questions presented as number 1.

    The hardest exams I ever had to take were from a professor who would hand out a list of 4 different multi-part questions, and tell you to answer 2 of them. The exam was open book and open note, no time limit. He would spend the 4 day exam week sitting in the classroom from 8 to 5 and students from any section of the class could start early or leave their unfinished exam with him and come back to finish it the next day. But your answers had to be comprehensive, and also demonstrate original thinking. You were essentially writing the rough draft of a book in response to the course, and so it might take you 16 hours to marathon your way through it.

    • CompostMaterial@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Honestly, that seems like a really good education. It would certainly suck at the time, but you are paying a lot of money to be educated so it would be nice to walk away from a class and know you could genuinely speak to the subject.