CO150 Final Examination, 2005-2006

CO150 Final Exam

Locations will be arranged with Sue Russell approximately at mid-term. She will contact instructors by email.  This exam time is slated only for CO150 and will not coincide with any other university scheduled exams.  We are not obligated to give a traditional exam for CO150, but the university requires that classes meet during the exam time.  Your options for what to do when you meet are flexible:  you can collect Part B of Portfolio III on this date or return all of Portfolio III – Part A if you have completed its grading, or you can create your own "exam" or facilitate a postscript for course, etc.

Please note that university rule prohibits graded events of value greater than 10% of the course grade conducted during the last week of classes. Therefore, this examination MUST be given during the final exam period.

Final Exam

The final examination asks students to write an extensive postscript to both the final arguing essay and the course. Remind students that they must submit (resubmit) their entire Portfolio at the time of the final.

First, students will write a postscript to Portfolio III.  You can create your own postscript questions, but the goal here is to foreground the writing process and the choices students made in writing each part of Portfolio III.

Second, students should answer some reflective questions about the course in general. What did they learn about writing? How might they apply what they learned to situations in the future? What did they learn about themselves as writers?

You can also create your own final exam as long as it still reflects our course goals; if you have questions, ask Steve, Kate, Sarah, Mike or any of the lecturers.  Other finals that have been successful in the past include extensive reflections on the course and how it will help students in their future academic and civic lives (letters to incoming CO150 students are effective contexts for this). Some people get creative and ask students to create skits or mini-performances to demonstrate what they learned during the semester.

The goal of the final exam is not to "test" students on their writing knowledge (what they write), but instead to get them thinking once more about the choices they make when writing since we so often neglect to take time to reflect on how we write.

Congratulations! You’ve completed your first semester of teaching composition. Enjoy the break. If you’d like to make any changes to this syllabus for next semester, please talk with Steve, Kate, Mike, Sarah or one of the lecturers. We would be happy to help you successfully incorporate syllabus revisions.