Many instructors choose to award grades based primarily on a single final written classroom examination given after the end of the last class. Practical writing and seminar courses do not give final exams. Faculty are highly encouraged to use innovative teaching methods to assess and evaluate students throughout the semester, particularly assignments that give formative feedback to students during the semester.
The examination period is determined by the Academic Dean and may not be varied. If you assign a take-home examination, you may determine the timing for students to download and submit exams while remaining within the designated examination period. Take-home examinations, are discouraged and should only be given when there is a clear pedagogical reason or goal in giving the exam as a take-home. Otherwise, the exam should be an Honor Board administered exam at the Law School.
Notification of unconventional examinations: At your election, you may determine grades for your course by any appropriate alternate means. For example, you may choose to base all or part of the grade on written assignments completed as the course progresses, or on a paper prepared by each student. Students should receive written notification before the end of the Drop/Add Period as to any unconventional examination methods. A copy of that notice must be sent to the Academic Dean. The examination methods may not be changed later in the semester.
The Registrar’s Office provides a template for the Cover and Instruction pages of your exam (download link below). The format of the examination is up to you. The subject matter of most courses lends itself to short essay questions or problems, but you can use multiple choice, true-false or any other form of examination so long as it provides your students with a fair opportunity to communicate to you their grasp of the subject matter of the course.
The time allowed students to complete a classroom examination is also a matter of your choice, but ordinarily nothing is gained by putting undue time pressure on the students. Perhaps to state the obvious, write your examination questions with a view to the fact that you have to grade them. In most courses, the duration of a classroom examination is between two and four hours.
You may wish to view the examination as an extension of the students' learning process. The exam should fairly reflect the major topics you have dealt with in the course.
The first page of each examination must contain the instructions for the examination. The instructions on the template below are required to be included in all examinations. You may include any additional instructions that are appropriate or helpful to you and your students.
Proofread your final examination with considerable care. Errors creates unnecessary difficulties for your students in taking the examination, and for you in grading it.
If you use short essay questions or problems in your examination, you can choose whether the students will use an examination booklet or type their answers using the exam software or write the answers on the examination itself in space provided for that purpose. In either case, page limits may be designated for student answers, but need not be.
GRADING EXAMINATIONS
Time for Submitting Grades: You will be given a date by which your final grades are due. It is extremely important that you comply with that deadline. Final grades for all students are recorded in a computer program which cannot begin to run until grades in all courses offered for the semester are recorded. All grades are released to students at the same time. If your grades are late, the entire process is delayed. We are under particular pressure in the spring semester due to Commencement; we need all grades to begin the ranking students for graduation and Latin honors. One missing grade delays the entire process. Please submit your grades on time.
Anonymous Grading: Classroom examinations and take-home examinations are graded anonymously .
Where anonymous grading applies, each student is assigned a random examination number which the student uses on the examination in lieu of a name. When you receive the completed examinations, you will be provided with a sheet containing only the examination numbers of the students in your course. Use those numbers to submit preliminary examination grades to the Registrar’s Office. Then, you will be given a final grade sheet which contains both the examination numbers and the students' names. Use this report to verify that the grade you submitted was entered correctly, and to make permissible adjustments to the final grade. You can submit your grades online via Novasis.
To assign a final grade, under Villanova’s policy, you may raise or lower the originally entered grade by a step of a grade (e.g., C to C+ or C to C-; B+ to A- or B+ to B) based on class participation and attendance.
After your final grades have been submitted, a student's grade can be changed only if there is a clear clerical or arithmetic error, and only with the approval of the Academic Dean. A student cannot retake an examination, or take a substitute examination, in order to raise a final grade. In no event will the Academic Dean alter a student's final grade awarded by you.