Blog #6 Advocacy Proposal: NO MORE EXAMS!

For my proposal I would like to solve the problem that many student have with final examinations and finals week as a whole. I believe that final exams consisting of multiple choice questions should not be used anymore and that more presentations and essay should replace these exams because they gauge what a student has learned much better. I think that by having a presentation/essay on topics discussed in class helps a student know the material much more efficiently compared to taking a multiple choice test because these presentations encourage thinking and reasoning versus just passing a test. Especially with online school because of COVID-19 students have started cheating at extremely high rates and are not learning much. The students at UIUCs main goal currently is to get a D- so that they can Pass/Fail their courses. I personally have taken about 10 courses in this past year and I believe that I have learned much more in courses where there is a presentation/essay compared to a course with exams. This projects scope will mostly focus on the mental health aspects and overall learning that these exams vs presentations provide. My target audience for this piece will the students and faculty at universities around the United States. The faculty will be the most important audience since they decide whether or not final exams will be abolished.

For the background information on this project I plan on including statistics that show the benefits of presentations and also the negatives of exams. One point that I will include is the fact that after our final exams, we are not even allowed to see our exam and see what we missed points on. Students are only given their grade on the exam and their final course grade. There is no point in making mistakes if we cannot learn from. Another point that I would like to make in the assignment is that when people cram for a final they are only focused on getting a good grade, not actually learning the material. I know from past experience that the day after a final I have forgotten basically everything because my brain was only memorizing it for the exam. The final point that I would like to make is that some people just do not perform well in the high pressure environment of a test. I have had many friends walk into an exam knowing much more than me but still getting a worse grade than me because they are not good test takers. Overall exams just do not portray a student’s full abilities. I believe that presentations and essay’s can give professor a better understanding of how much a student knows compared to these exams.

The main audience for this proposal will be the faculty but students will play a huge role as well because they will need to agree with the proposal and help push for it by stating that they have learned more by doing these presentations. Most professors really care about whether or not a student learned from their course and many professors would change their course plan to better a student’s learning. I also believe that professor’s would much rather sit through these presentations compared to watching over an exam. The proposal to abolish all final examinations will never become uniform across all course at university of Illinois because many math and stem courses would not suffice on just presentations. There are many other course though like the economics courses that would benefit heavily from this proposal. I think that I want the audience to take the time out of their day and complete all of these ICE evaluation forms and mention how presentation in other classes made them learn much more compared to the classes with exams. These ICE evaluation forms are a great way to have our voice as student heard when it comes to course outlines.