Test and Project Based Finals Being Offered to Students
As the end of the 2022-23 school year is right around the corner, students and teachers prepare for finals.
By Abigail Shlimenzon
As the end of the 2022-23 school year is right around the corner, students and teachers prepare for finals.
By Abigail Shlimenzon
As the 2022-23 school year starts to wrap up, students are faced with the upcoming finals.
Test based final exams are the standard for most teachers, but it is not the required format. Many teachers can tailor their final exams for their class type, by changing the format to a project or presentation.
Despite having finals twice a year, many students are still intimidated by the idea of a single test or project dictating their final grade for that class. Finals can be worth anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of a student’s entire semester grade, which means that it can impact a student's grade by an entire letter grade. Stress to do well academically often causes these final exams to put students under pressure.
Some teachers have noticed this, which led them to use project based finals in hopes of mitigating stress. Art teacher Annie Tobin uses a project based final that allows students to showcase the creative and technical skills that they have built throughout the year.
“Our finals are really just a written reflection on the work that we've done looking from start to finish at some of the projects we did and how we've improved areas,” said Tobin. “I think there is minimal stress because it's not a final that they are used to. There is no test, so in general it is stress free already built in.”
Other teachers who are sticking with the traditional test based finals use review guides as a way to minimize stress and help students better prepare. Math teacher Cem Yesilyurt is planning to do a mixture of exams, with some classes, such as precalculus honors, having only a test and others, such as AP computer science, having both a test and project.
“We are going to do a review pretty steadily for at least a week in precalculus honors and in ECS we are also going to do a systematic review of all the topics we did in the second semester which might take a week as well,” said Yesilyurt. “For AP Computer Science, we are going to do some multiple choice question review and free response review for two or three days, because they're still very fresh with AP tests.”
Some students such as Miles Broadwell, 12, have noticed the benefits that project based finals provide to their education.
“I prefer projects by far. They give you more time. You get to explore an idea a lot more than you would on a test. You get to have actual fun with it, depending on what project you're doing. And you get to put more thought into it. You get to do research and you get to learn more things that the teacher couldn't fit in about the subject you like. And I think that's a lot more important than just how good you can remember,” said Broadwell.
Other students feel that their preference of project type depends on the class it is for.
“If I think it is a boring class, the tests are probably better because you just get it over with and you don't have to spend a lot of time working on something that you don't really enjoy, but in a class that I like I think that a project isn't too bad,” said Gabe Sunseri, 10.
Most subjects at Pioneer have some sort of finals that are customized to fit the topics learned in the class better. English teacher Theresa Kurzawa has a presentation based final for her class.
“For English, it's a lot of demonstrating what you're capable of. Can you think critically? Can you convey those ideas in an organized and concise and well supported manner? Which I think are skills that you need everywhere,” said Kurzawa. “For other content areas I think there's a lot of basic general knowledge that's imperative to have. Understanding the history of our country and how we came here, understanding the history of the world and how we can learn from those mistakes. I think it's important to be able to understand those concepts and be able to convey that knowledge in an authentic way. It is the sum of everything and it is nice as a student, to be able to look back at where you started and where you have gotten.”
Test based final exams are the standard for most teachers, but it is not the required format. Many teachers can tailor their final exams for their class type, by changing the format to a project or presentation.
Despite having finals twice a year, many students are still intimidated by the idea of a single test or project dictating their final grade for that class. Finals can be worth anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of a student’s entire semester grade, which means that it can impact a student's grade by an entire letter grade. Stress to do well academically often causes these final exams to put students under pressure.
Some teachers have noticed this, which led them to use project based finals in hopes of mitigating stress. Art teacher Annie Tobin uses a project based final that allows students to showcase the creative and technical skills that they have built throughout the year.
“Our finals are really just a written reflection on the work that we've done looking from start to finish at some of the projects we did and how we've improved areas,” said Tobin. “I think there is minimal stress because it's not a final that they are used to. There is no test, so in general it is stress free already built in.”
Other teachers who are sticking with the traditional test based finals use review guides as a way to minimize stress and help students better prepare. Math teacher Cem Yesilyurt is planning to do a mixture of exams, with some classes, such as precalculus honors, having only a test and others, such as AP computer science, having both a test and project.
“We are going to do a review pretty steadily for at least a week in precalculus honors and in ECS we are also going to do a systematic review of all the topics we did in the second semester which might take a week as well,” said Yesilyurt. “For AP Computer Science, we are going to do some multiple choice question review and free response review for two or three days, because they're still very fresh with AP tests.”
Some students such as Miles Broadwell, 12, have noticed the benefits that project based finals provide to their education.
“I prefer projects by far. They give you more time. You get to explore an idea a lot more than you would on a test. You get to have actual fun with it, depending on what project you're doing. And you get to put more thought into it. You get to do research and you get to learn more things that the teacher couldn't fit in about the subject you like. And I think that's a lot more important than just how good you can remember,” said Broadwell.
Other students feel that their preference of project type depends on the class it is for.
“If I think it is a boring class, the tests are probably better because you just get it over with and you don't have to spend a lot of time working on something that you don't really enjoy, but in a class that I like I think that a project isn't too bad,” said Gabe Sunseri, 10.
Most subjects at Pioneer have some sort of finals that are customized to fit the topics learned in the class better. English teacher Theresa Kurzawa has a presentation based final for her class.
“For English, it's a lot of demonstrating what you're capable of. Can you think critically? Can you convey those ideas in an organized and concise and well supported manner? Which I think are skills that you need everywhere,” said Kurzawa. “For other content areas I think there's a lot of basic general knowledge that's imperative to have. Understanding the history of our country and how we came here, understanding the history of the world and how we can learn from those mistakes. I think it's important to be able to understand those concepts and be able to convey that knowledge in an authentic way. It is the sum of everything and it is nice as a student, to be able to look back at where you started and where you have gotten.”