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When I guest blogged here last April, I did a post about law school midterms. I noted that I give an ungraded midterm in all of my classes and listed nine reasons for doing so. The main reason I give an ungraded midterm is to give students feedback about where they stand at the mid-point of the semester. The main reason why the midterm is ungraded is that "I have a feeling that if I gave a graded midterm, students would understandably but detrimentally (for both their other professors and them) shift most of their attention away from other classes in the week(s) before the midterm." At the same time, I lamented how the "one exam to rule them all" format of most law school classes means that a student's performance on one day can make or break the student regardless of how the student performed over the course of the rest of the semester. For this reason, I would love to be able to give a graded midterm, but I just don't see it working out for me in the classic law school structure.

That said, in my previous post, I raised the idea of a midterm week. Under this idea, a week at the mid-point of a semester would be designated "midterm week," and there would be no classes. Instead, every class would have a midterm. Under this system, there would be no worry about students skipping other classes and coming to class underprepared in the week when they are taking a graded midterm in another class. No set of students would be disadvantaged by having to take their attention away from other classes; instead, all students would be in the same boat. All students would get feedback about where they stand at the mid-point of the semester, and the final exam would no longer be the be all end all.

Of course, a midterm week would increase workloads for professors. It would increase stress for students and would be one hell of a hell week. It would mean that professors would have to cut a week worth of material from their syllabi. In other words, it wouldn't be ideal, but I doubt that many professors would say that the current situation is ideal either. So, what do readers think? Would you endorse a midterm week at your school, would you entertain the idea, or are you completely opposed to the idea? Or does your school already have some version of midterm week? Once again, you can answer by responding to the following poll and/or leaving a comment to this post. For, the record, I am in the "My law doesn't have a version of it, and I am ambivalent on it" category.

 

-Colin Miller