Guideline for the 2020 Winter Quarter Final Exam for Math Department

Math Instructors.

Thank you for your patience and flexibility as we work to find best alternatives for giving final exams next week. This email contains policies, guidance, and advice on how final exams should be implemented. Please read this email in its entirety, as it contains important information. Later, we will follow up with guidance on running Spring 2020 courses remotely.

**General Policies**

All final exams should be offered remotely. No student should be required to physically come onto campus during finals week (including for submission of final exam materials).
Final exams must be given during Final Exam week (and not before). The only exception to this is if every student agrees to take a final Exam during this week. Students must not feel pressured to do so. Thus, this is only reasonable for very small classes.
If you have already told your students you will hold your exam on Friday, March 13, you must also offer them an opportunity to take an exam during Finals week using an alternate delivery mechanism (see below for options).
Instructors now have the ability to modify their syllabi to adjust the weight of the final exam. In particular, decreasing the weight of the final may be appropriate; in some cases, a decrease to a 20% weight may be reasonable. If this is done, please communicate this with students.
Instructors are allowed (but not required) to give students the option of not taking a final exam (and using current scores to compute grades) or taking a final exam. However, every student must be given a final exam if they want it. Thus, students must actively *opt out* of a final exam. Final exams are not allowed to be cancelled for entire classes. If a student is given this option to not take their final, their final grade should be made clear to them as part of the decision process.
Math 2A/2B must transition to an online final exam, given using Canvas (more info below).

**Options for Final Exam Delivery**

Below are suggestions/options for how to deliver your final exam. The decision is ultimately up to the discretion of the instructor (except for Math 2A/2B; see below for 2A/2B info), so long as they conform to the above-mentioned policies.

Take-home Exams. This is recommended for many of the upper-division or graduate courses. Take-home exams are frequently given with a set number of days for completion (e.g., handed out / available on Friday, due the Wednesday of finals week). Instructors must include an option to electronically turn-in the final exams (via email or Canvas, for example). Physical submissions are also acceptable, but should not be required of students. If this option is exercised, please let your students know soon the availability date and due date of the exam, as well as what resources are not allowed during the test.
At-home Exams. This may be suitable for some of the lower-division courses (e.g., Math 2D thru Math 13). At-home exams are still conducted during the usual final exam 2-hour block. However, students only have access to the final exam questions during their 2-hour window. They write their answers on a blank piece of paper and use a scanner or scanning app (e.g., dropbox, Notes App on Iphone, etc). Students then have approx 20 mins to upload their scans to Canvas. This would require setting the final exam as an “Assignment” in Canvas, setting submission type to “Online” and enabling “File Uploads”. If this method is chosen, it is advisable to have students practice using a scanning app and uploading to canvas before the final exam takes place. This can be done by creating a “Dummy assignment” that has similar settings to the final exam, allowing students to upload scans via Canvas.
Canvas Exams, using Respondus. Canvas has a “quiz” feature that allows instructors to give a canvas-hosted final exam. Types of questions allowed include multiple choice, True/False, type-in-a-number, and short answer responses (text only, no math symbols allowed). If you are considering a Canvas exam, you should also consider utilizing the Respondus Browser Lockdown feature (available on Canvas...look in the bottom left-hand corner of your Canvas page). This new addition to Canvas essentially “locks down” a browser and does not allow navigating away from the exam. More features can be found at: https://web.respondus.com/he/lockdownbrowser/ Chris Davis has offered to hold some “office hours” on Friday, 3:30-4:30pm for instructors to stop by RH 440J to get some individual guidance on how to craft canvas questions. Chris has also recorded a short youtube introduction to Canvas exams (called “Quizzes” in Canvas). A sample quiz is attached to this email and can be imported into Canvas as explained at the beginning of Chris’s video: https://youtu.be/tXcu32ZJrgM

**Special Arrangement for Math 2A/2B**

Given the coordinated nature of Math 2A and 2B and large class sizes, we have decided to offer an online, Canvas-based final exam using Respondus (Option 3 above). These exams will be given during the already-scheduled final exam times (which are different for each instructor).

We will work with instructors for these courses to make available questions that can be easily formatted to Multiple Choice, T/F, type-in-a-number, or short answer (no math symbol) delivery. Separate emails will be sent to these instructors with details. Instructors for these courses should start to familiarize themselves with creating Canvas exams and Respondus.

**General Advice**

Given the unprecedented nature of this final exam experience, please be sure to communicate frequently and clearly with your students. During your last class meeting, go over the logistics for the final exam and make sure all questions are answered. In addition to making a verbal announcement in class, please e-mail your students so that instructions are in writing. Redundant emails and reminders are also a good idea. Encourage students to familiarize themselves with any of the technology that might be utilized (e.g., scanning apps, Canvas, etc). In particular, many final delivery options require a computer with a microphone and webcam and with appropriate browser plug-ins, etc. Also, encourage them to start now to find a *quiet place* to take the exam, if it is given during a specific chunk of time. Many students will be at home or in dorms when they are taking their exams. Lastly, please do mention to them that the assessment given, no matter what the modality, is crafted in a way that will fairly assess learning objectives of the course.

Thank you all again for your flexibility and cooperation with the above.

Any specific questions can be sent to Zhiqin Lu (zlu@uci.edu), Bob Pelayo (rcpelayo@uci.edu), and Chris Davis (daviscj@uci.edu).