Midterm Grades and Midterm Exams for FYW Courses At City Tech Spring, 2015

Faculty are required to confidentially inform students of their midterm grades based on work submitted prior to the spring recess.  Although midterm grades cannot be reported in CUNYFirst, there are several other options for doing this:  faculty can record student midterm grades in BlackBoard, or on paper when the instructor returns an assignment or essay.  Faculty are actively discouraged from e-mailing students their midterm grades because this can lead to some confusion on the part of students and to extra work for faculty members.

The grading scheme is as follows:

P=Passing work

BL= Borderline

U=Unsatisfactory

SA=Stopped Attending

Although NOT required for FYW courses at City Tech, midterm exams involving some type of in-class writing activity are included by many instructors in the FYW program in their courses.  Instructors use the midterm exam for one or more of the following purposes:  to prepare students for the final exam, which is a requirement for all FYW courses; to give students an opportunity to practice in-class essay writing; to allow students to practice some specific element of college-level reading and writing practices, including summary writing and/or textual analysis.  Midterm grades may or may not include the grade a student receives on the midterm exam if one is administered since students will have already submitted a number of formal and informal writing and reading assignments prior to taking the exam, and thus have completed enough work for the instructor to assess their performance in the course.

A sample midterm exam for the ENG1101 course is available on the FYW @ City Tech Open Lab website, and can be accessed here:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/firstyearwriting/college-writing-resources-links/first-year-writing-exams/sample-exams/

Additional information about the FYW course final exams can be accessed here:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/firstyearwriting/college-writing-resources-links/first-year-writing-exams/

Instructors of FYW courses at City Tech are responsible for designing their own midterm exam if they choose to give one, and are encouraged to closely integrate whatever midterm assessment method they choose into their specific course content.