There are some courses and subjects where things start off from scratch almost, and it is not toward the end of term where sufficient material has been taught that the pieces can come together in an aggregated fashion. Until enough has been learned, it can be hard to assess mastery. Often these types of courses are in the first two years of university; the years spent creating the knowledge and conceptual foundation. The third and fourth years are sometimes viewed to be the levels where the concepts are applied, explored, and more deeply understood.

If you have one of these types of foundational courses with a big learning curve, read on. Otherwise, please use the prev note on final assessments.

Suggestions...

• Be prepared for the effort it takes to create a good exam. It can take LOTS of time!!!!!
• The very nature of the course and material means that weighted assessments will occur at the end of the course. Explain this to the students. Embrace it, work with it.
• Toward the end of the term, stop teaching new material and focus more on practicing, understanding what has been taught. This might be the last two weeks of the course. That is ok. Stop the fountain of new knowledge and skills. Create some confidence if you can, help the students understand what they do not understand.
• You need to support this concept during the term to monitor progress, give nudges, etc. so that a student who could master the material can be successful, and those who cannot, will not.
• The assessments can and probably probe both individual concepts, but also the integration and inter-relationships between the topics. The assessment should explore the dynamics, dependencies, and co-dependencies if possible.

• We strongly suggest multiple touch points and monitoring through the term to identify those engaged, those not engaged, those at risk, those not. The at-risk students should have interventions before the final. If the student is not engaging based on their own judgement, or because of other activities, so be it. However, if the student is not engaged because of factors you might be able to affect, it is wise and appropriate to help the student (with modern online teaching platforms, it is often possible to know if a student is engaged, and you can perhaps reach out, encourage, nudge the student in various ways).
• If a student has in fact a bad day and just blows the test because of stress or other health reasons, it is important to have a parachute.
• If you have a rule about minimums (e.g., if you get less than 35% on the final, that is your final mark, regardless) you need to make this clear from the start of term, provide support and help along the journey, monitor, and connect with the students. The fear and structure should not negatively impact the student. There should be a mechanism whereby a student is doing good during the term, doing the work themselves, not cheating, has a bad day, and is not punished. It is possible to have such a process, but it takes thought and mindfulness.
• Set the standards where they should be and have good reasons for doing so. Have supports and monitoring where you need them. This is where the format of instruction is important. It is relatively easy to know what student knows what if you attend and participate in the labs, tutorials, etc. If you do not, you might be able to rely on great TAs. Really knowing what each student knows and can do during the term is hard with live-streaming and almost impossible to do via asynchronous video formats. You need a high level of interaction if you are going to do a great job monitoring, tracking and understanding what might happen on a big final.
• Do not punish who are doing the right stuff and then have a bad day. Do not reward those who take advantage of others during the term and then just punt on the final knowing that they will pass on the group effort. It is a delicate balance and it takes proactive management and effort to get right. Assuming that a ‘good’ student can talk with you, figure it out, and then write a make-up exam the next term is not a great solution. It causes WAY too much stress and extra work!
• If you support the students along the way, you can have the joy of watching a student going from not being able to do something to being able to do something on the summative final. That is a big thrill and makes teaching worthwhile.
• Focus the final on using the knowledge and not on memorization. Emphasize this through exercises and activities during the term, especially in the last few weeks. Share old finals and provide opportunities for the students to get feedback on their attempts at using their knowledge in a summative way. The final should not be the first time that the students are faced by the type of assessment you are planning. You need to reduce the fear, stress, and anxiety associated with a big final and the students need to believe that they can 'do it', 'that it will work out, even if they have a bad hair day'.
• There needs to be a balance of difficulty of the questions, or parts of the questions. It has to be a composition. For example, 30% straight forward, 30% shows enough knowledge, 20% for average knowledge, 20% for material with increasing difficulty. It should be possible for an average student putting in the average effort to get an average grade.
• A difficult concept should not prevent a student from answering the rest of the question. There should be a recovery plan to ensure that the student's mastery is accurately assessed.
• The exam should be balanced in terms of the material - the more time spent on it during lectures / tutorials / labs, the more marks it should be on the exam. Only a sampling of smaller, less important topics, need to be tested, don't test them all. If you give out old exams for students to practice, and you should, students will get a feel for how these topics are handled - struggling students can opt to set their priorities elsewhere, as they should, and students aiming to excel will study them all.
• A final exam is not the place for students to be trying something new. This doesn't mean that the students know the questions before hand, rather it means that they are being tested on knowledge and techniques that they have been given ample opportunity to practice, and have received feedback on this practice.
• Think about the time students will spend both reading, solving, and providing the solution to the question. The marks allocated to the question should reflect this, although adjustments are made to fit the first point, and in some cases to "limit the damage" if a student cannot answer or struggles with answering the question.
• Answer every question yourself when drafting the exam paper. Then answer them again taking into account common mistakes that students can make. Answer the questions using the same media as the students... you may discover time is being wasted writing out information that should not be tested, or is repeated.
• Get someone else to review the exam.

Suggestions for marking...

• We suggest a quick scan of the results to see how things all out - what can be considered top, middle, and bottom results. Understand how the exam performed before the final assessment scheme is determined.
• We suggest that the questions and format allow for the process or partial work to be seen. We think it is important to understand the how and the what - how the student applies the knowledge and not just the final answer.
• All exams that result in a failing grade for the course should be reviewed in their entirety by the instructor before the final grade is assigned. This check is not only to make sure there are no grading errors, but also to consider a complete picture of the student's effort, which is after all why one is having said exam in the first place.
• A sample of the submissions should always be reviewed by the instructor. This will also help the instructor understand what the students find hard, easy, what mistakes are made, and how to adjust the course going forward.
• After grading, check: For each individual question, did a student earn a perfect mark? Does the histogram for each question look like you had expected? You should know how some of the students are expected to perform on the exam, and check whether they received a grade that was close to what was expected, and if there are several students who seem to be doing poorer than expected, investigate further.

If one does it right, the exam should be really boring to proctor - no typos, few student questions. The students should walk out of the exam thinking that it was reasonable. There should be no surprises from start to finish, and you, the instructor, are going to have to put in the time to make sure this happens. Repeatedly, because there is no cheating and using the same exam every year....

Further reading

• Supporting Students’ Mental Wellbeing: Instructional Strategies. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo. https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/teaching-tips-planning-courses-and-assignments/supporting-students-mental-wellbeing-instructional