When I was an undergraduate, exam week was something you actually trained for, just like an Olympic event.

Weeks ahead of time, study groups organized, coffee was hoarded to ensure caffeine for the inevitable “all-nighters” before the tests, and previous final exams (if they could be obtained, legally or illegally) were studied like the Rosetta Stone.

The professors (or more frequently graduate students) preparing the tests were suddenly given most-favored-instructor status to see if anything about the tests could be gleaned before we headed into blue book hell for three hours. And it was blue book hell — if you failed the final exam, you failed the course, period. How well you were doing to that point was, well, irrelevant if you couldn’t pass the final.

Volume seemed to count for a lot. If you were fast enough to actually fill several blue books, it might help cloud the issue if you still didn’t completely understand the political significance of Constantinople in the 17th Century, for example.

But this year (as usual) the hot seller at our bookstore is Scantron sheets, not blue books. It’s probably because most faculty aren’t keen on reading 150 hand-scrawled exams about Constantinople either. Or it could be because there just isn’t time to adequately assess that many students in the short time frame between final exam week and the time to turn in grades (unless you don’t mind skipping Christmas with your family).

Many instructors have given up entirely on the final exam model, opting instead for having students put together some kind of semester-long project that demonstrates their knowledge of the subject. That certainly removes the Armageddon stress about final exams, at least for the faculty. Most likely students are living the all-night cram sessions of my youth, as they finally started their semester long project this past weekend.

Recently, our University has been ordered to “assess” student learning. I always thought that’s what I was doing whenever I gave a test. However, most of the assessment models that the administrative bureaucracies (such as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges) want are much fuzzier than simple testing. In fact, they are so squishy that if you can actually understand what these agencies claim they want, you probably can qualify for a career with the Psychic Hotline.

But it’s not like we have it figured out either. Last week I overheard two students in the bookstore bragging that they hadn’t started any of their semester projects yet, but would over Thanksgiving vacation. They were in the bookstore purchasing a single copy of a required textbook for one of their classes (to share) which they thought might aid in developing project ideas to ponder between turkey and dessert.

I can’t help but question, as I begin to assess my students’ learning, if those sudden death, all-or-nothing final exams with the blue books didn’t have some real merit.

Oh hell. Bring them on. Christmas is overrated anyway.

Michael J. Fitzgerald is a professor of Journalism and a member of the CSUS Faculty Senate. He can be reached by mail C/O the State Hornet- CSUS, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA, or by e-mail at [email protected].