My Notes
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I regularly give an oral exam instead of a written exam in my junior and senior level organometallics seminar course. The course focuses on the primary literature, discussion of advanced topics, and asking questions. A written exam would not evaluate the students' abilities on the important skill development they learned in the class. Besides, I am better able to gauge when a student has no idea about a certain topic, or just needs a little nudge in order for them to demonstrate that they actually understand 95% of it. Students are almost universally fearful of this oral exam, but most report to me later that they found it valuable and helpful practice for future oral examinations. That is my primary goal for doing the exam in this way.
I always select a paper that appears during the semester I teach the class. This year, I chose a paper by someone I know and have interacted with personally at Gordon conferences, though I have to admit, I had never read one of Liz's papers before. So, thanks, Liz, for writing my final exam for me this year.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| instructions for students in docx format | 17.12 KB |
| instructions for students in pdf format | 46.17 KB |
| reading guide questions in docx format | 21.55 KB |
| reading guide questions in pdf format | 91.19 KB |
students will demonstrate the ability to read and understand a paper from the primary literature
students will demonstrate their understanding of the fundamentals of organometallic chemistry, including, CBC classification, reaction mechanism, structure, and bonding.
After a semester of reading and discussing papers, I gave them the instructions in the second to last week of the course. I then posted the reading guide and paper to our Canvas site in the last week of the semester. Students booked a 30 minute exam time (I made sure I had an hour free for each student). Students started with a 5-10 minute summary of the paper and then we moved into a discussion of the main points. Although I provided 17 reading guide questions, we focused mostly on the latter 8 questions provided at the end.
Evaluation
I gave a holistic grade based on how well the student was able to carry out their side of what truly ends up being a conversation. I don't mind if I have to suggest, lead, or even push the student to get an answer, as long as they are participating. Sometimes a student just doesn't know how to address a line of reasoning, and I either move on to something I think they can get, or, if it is an important point that I want them to learn that we didn't cover explicitly in class (like question 5 in this example), then I will explain the answer quickly to provide them with one last learning opportunity.
It is generally quite easy to score these, and I tend to give 9/10 as my default score. I always reserve 10/10 for that student that really hits the ball out of the park, and scores below 7 are extremely rare. For 2023, the average score was 8.4/10.