Goals and Assessment

The purpose of this exam is to assess your understanding of the readings that we’re engaging (as explained/expanded upon in my video lectures). That means (at least) two things:

i. The questions will be PURELY DESCRIPTIVE. In other words, the questions will NOT ask you to assess the readings (i.e., to explain what’s wrong with the view a particular author defends). Assessment will take place in your essays… here, the goal is to merely test your knowledge/understanding of the arguments each author presents.

ii. The best answers (those that receive full marks) will be those which demonstrate a clear and accurate understanding of the material.

THIS MEANS THAT YOU CANNOT ANSWER (and receive full grades) BY MERELY QUOTING FROM THE READING OR MY LECTURE NOTES!!!!

In other words, merely cutting and pasting your answers from either the text of the reading or my video lectures does not show that you understand the element of the reading about which you are being asked. Doing so will therefore cause you to lose grades.

NOTE: the highest grade you will be able to receive should you choose to copy and paste the notes in the video lectures or passages from the readings is 50% (and you’ll receive 50% only if you copied and pasted the exactly right passages from my lectures or the readings).

ALSO NOTE: Paraphrasing is necessary to demonstrate your understanding of the material. But paraphrasing DOES NOT consist in merely copying my note or the reading and then simply changing a couple of the key words. You’re going to have to express the ideas/arguments presented in the readings in your own terms (with the exception of technical language an author relies upon).

FINAL NOTE: Even though paraphrasing is necessary, you will also have to rely on the key/central terms from the readings … so don’t, for example, change the phrase ‘Continuity Account of Personal Identity’ in order to answer the McMahan question. Part of assessing your comprehension of the readings will involve you being able to recognize which terms/phrases are essential to an author’s position, and which are able to be replaced by synonyms.

Structure of the Questions (and Your Answers)

As far as structuring your answers goes, try to follow the structure of the question …

As you’ll see, the questions are made up of several sentences, so you might think of each sentence as needing a paragraph or two (or three) to respond.

Grading and Feedback

As I noted above, all of your answers will be out of 10. The most refined grade you will receive is a 0.5, i.e., the grading increments will proceed by half a mark (so 5/10, 5.5/10, 6/10, 6.5/10, 7/10, 7.5/10, etc …).

If you accurately answer every element of the question that you’ve been asked, but then fail to include any of the details elaborating your answer, you will receive a minimum of 7/10.

The difference between answers that receive a 7/10 and those that receive 10/10 will therefore be a difference of degree, one that is based on the extent to which you accurately and precisely articulate the details relevant to that answer.

The only feedback you will receive is your numeric result out of 10 for each answer, to be interpreted in light of what I’ve just said (e.g., if you get 7/10, that means that you   gave the basic correct answer to every element of the question but needed to better elaborate the details that were relevant to that answer).

NOTE: If you’d like more feedback about where you specifically went wrong, I will happily discuss your results with you during my Zoom office hours.

ALSO NOTE: Each question on the exam will be graded by a single T.A. (or me) for all 360 students (one of the nicer features of OWL). Doing so ensures that there will be a consistency across the class in the grading of each question. That method also means, however, that I am going to be really hesitant to change any a particular grade for any particular question.

Study Tip

I only have one real study tip, and it might seem obvious, but after the recent increase in online teaching experiences I’ve had (thanks pandemic?) it’s something that is not as obvious to some as I thought it would/should be. Here’s the tip:

PREPARE FOR THE EXAM AS THOUGH YOU ARE WRITING IT IN PERSON!!!!!

While I believe that many students recognize this point, a surprisingly large number don’t appear to. I take it that the explanation is the (deceptively) large time window combined   with the fact that it’s a take home exam. That is, there’s a possible five hours of writing time, and the exam is open book (and ‘open video lecture’), leading some students to believe that they’ll be able to learn the details about the questions they’re being asked while the exam is taking place. THIS IS (I humbly submit) A MISTAKEN BELIEF!!!!