IN-CLASS ESSAYS

I. Basic Guidelines

Your in-class exams will consist of some combination of identifications, short-answer essays, and long-answer essays. The exact requirements for your section will be listed on your syllabus; please refer to it.

You will receive a study guide one week prior to each test. There will not be anything on the exam that does not appear on the study guide.

The exams are closed-book, but you may bring a 4 x 6 inch card with notes into the test. This card can contain whatever information you wish on it, and does not have to be hand-written. If you prefer, you can set your computer font to the tiniest size you can still read and print out a 4 x 6 inch block of text.

All in-class exams must be written in a blue book in either blue or black ink or in pencil. Your name should appear only on the front page of the blue book and should contain no other identifying marks. I prefer to preserve your anonymity while I am grading your exams, a provision that I believe minimizes my bias as a reader.

I will return all exams within a week of the date of the test. Please do not ask me if I've finished grading the day after the exam. I haven't.

Please remember that an in-class exam is designed to test your knowledge of the lecture material and the course reading, not your research skills. As such, the use of outside sources is inappropriate; and the use of outside sources that have not been properly cited will be treated as plagiarism.