Most college courses require students to take a midterm exam, which may significantly impact their mental health and academic standing if they perform poorly.
It is unfair to expect college students to spend their whole week studying, even if it seems to be the most significant approach to achieving academic success. This standard is insane given the challenges students face in the real world.
Amin Vahedian, assistant professor in the Operations Management and Information Systems Department, said having midterms is necessary because the material he teaches is pretty dense.
“If students don’t keep up with readings, it will become overwhelming and unmanageable at the end,” Vahedian said.
Readings for a class can vary, and students opt for skimming rather than spend hours reading thoroughly. Skimming readings can lead to reduced deep reading or grasp complexity and form their own thoughts, according to The Guardian.
“I think the midterm is helping because if they are not good at keeping up with readings, they will see that it is necessary to keep up,” Vahedian said.
Studying for midterms can take hours, depending on the course. Many low-income students have to work for a living, which makes going to school and working difficult.
“Whenever I’m creating an assessment, I’m trying to obviously consider the time commitment because there are standards,” Vahedian said.
Maintaining a job and school is challenging when midterm exams account for a major percentage of your final grade. Students who must work should not be forced to choose between working for a living and doing well on their exams.
Deyci Ramirez, an NIU CHANCE counselor, believes there are different ways for instructors to be able to assess students’ learning other than exams.
“I think that there’s students that have different needs, there’s different circumstances for every student as to why they may or may not have been able to study for an exam and to hold somebody accountable,” Ramirez said. “That’s very heavy, and that’s a lot of pressure.”
The time spent preparing for midterms can be detrimental if students emphasize memorizing information rather than comprehending the content. Professors should be more considerate of students with different learning styles.
Mental health problems are common among students, according to a survey of more than 1,200 college students nationwide by TimelyMD, a virtual health and wellness service in higher education.
Mental health was the biggest stressor among students, followed by finances and academics, according to the survey.
“We are constantly testing students to the point where it has taken away from the love of actually wanting to learn information; but rather, ‘how am I going to pass the exams that you are going to give me?’” Ramirez said.
Exams, other than measuring a student’s cumulative knowledge, serve no function. Exams require a great deal of effort and commitment for little in return. Doing poorly on them can make weeks worth of work go down the drain.
“Like, all exams are like a baseline assessment,” Vahedian said. “They are not the best, they’re not the worst. They are just effective to an acceptable level.”
Although midterms help students determine their knowledge and areas of improvement, the same can be done with small-scale evaluations like quizzes, homework, projects or presentations.
“Depending on the course, that could be for mine, that is mostly concepts,” Vahedian said. “It’s easy to prepare, easy to create and easy for the students to understand how they are supposed to be ready for it, as opposed to a project that they have no idea where it’s gonna go.”
Memorizing test answers should not be weighted more than a student’s academic performance throughout the semester.
“I also agree that not one assessment should determine how the students score overall,” Vahedian said. “I believe in spreading out the portion of the grade shared among most activities so that students have an opportunity – if they don’t do well in one, they have an opportunity to make up.”
Midterms should be evenly spread throughout the semester rather than packed into one comprehensive exam. This packed schedule makes it difficult for students to maintain a healthy school-life balance. Instead, professors should give a series of unit exams or course projects throughout the semester.
“I understand that, you know, people have jobs, people have things outside of my class,” Ramirez said. “I can’t expect them to do readings on top of homework, on top of papers, on top of all of these things.”
