An Open Appeal to Teachers and College Professors

Dear Academics,

I write this letter to put words to the flaws I have observed and the critiques I have about examinations. I speak with the authority of 18 years experience as a student who has observed several scores of teachers and professors alike. While I cannot speak for anyone else's experiences, I will assume that at least one other current or former student has empathy for my opinion.

My requests are as follows:

1. If you want us to learn about a topic germane to the course, set aside class or lecture time to at least acknowledge that we were to read the assignment. A regular discussion period would be preferable, but there should be a summery for longer readings at the beginning of each class or only assign the most important readings. Assignments should not take twice the amount of time we have in class.
2. If you want to accurately assess the class's knowledge of course material, you should give exams that are similar in nature to assigned homework questions or in-class examples. For example, if we only talk about the concepts behind a T-Test formula and are expected to do questions at random from the book and bring them to a problem night, then assign problems that will be similar to what you plan to ask on the exam. I should not be expected to understand the class notes, use the related equations in a textbook question, then find out that the exam asks questions that are so conceptual in nature that we are required to predict the one formula of the multiple formulas that will ensure that we will actually finish the exam in the allotted time.
3. If you are going to use questions that are word from word taken from the textbook, then at least have the decency of changing the values that are given. If it is considered academic dishonesty for a student to present someone else's work as our own, then it sure also academically dishonest for a teacher or professor to not give credit to the author of the question. Its the least you can do for the person who developed the problem that reduced the amount of time you were willing to spend creating the exam.
4. Exams are about testing knowledge, not maximizing the number of questions you think students can answer in the allotted time. This only encourages cramming, sloppy work, and murder plots on the students' side.
5. If almost half of the students that took your exam, quiz, or paper receive a score below 70%, the fault lies with the teacher, not the student. This is especially true in a scientific discipline that promotes the concept of Occam's razor.
6. Excluding lab time or events specifically outlined in the semester's syllabus, do not penalize students who cannot attend out of class meetings that are not required. If I have two separate classes that have events on the same Thursday evening, Im I expected to ignore one event over the other because it makes that one academic feel better? OR am I supposed to magically be at both events at the same time and I never got my time-turner from Professor Dumbledore?
7. Proof read your power points, prompts, and exams. I get it, humans make mistakes. Since this is true, how is it fare or UPB to permit academics the ability to decrease a student's grade if the student does not proof read, but it is totally fine for the etcher or professor to give the wrong mean variable on an exam an then in the last 20 minutes of the exam require all student sot change the mean variable for the problem? It also does not make it better if you allow student the ability to keep their answers if they already solved the problem with the incorrect value and then require a paragraph explaining why they thought solution looked incorrect.
8. Finally, If you have an average class attendance rate of 90% and up, don't assume your students don't want to learn or do not care about the material if they do not go to your office hours. We occasionally have lives outside school. We also might have a 10 page paper due the next day. Regardless of the reason, if we think we know the material based on your lecture, then we think that you as an academic knows what you are talking about and have increase our own knowledge as students. As a result, if your students hold this belief and then do poorly as a whole on the exam, then there is a disconnect between student and academic for sure. This being said, do not blame the students entirely for this disconnect. If they did not know that they misunderstand the material, then they would have met up with your. The fault is in the presentation. Again, Occam's razor.

I have more complaints, to be sure, but I write this letter with the best of intentions. I want to learn and so do other students. The is why we are willing to put ourselves in debt to spend at least four years in institutions of higher learning. My hope is that you all are sympathetic to my perspective and that this sympathy can improve the way students learn from academics. 

Thank you for for your time and I will see you next class.

-T Servitive