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.

SUBJECT:     FYW End of Term Memo: Final Exams, Final Grades, and eClass Folders

DATE:            December 4, 2014

TO:                 First Year Writing (FYW) Faculty

FROM:            Johannah Rodgers, Director of Composition
________________________________________________________________________

Dear Colleagues,

As an addendum to the End of Term Memo distributed last week by Prof. Nina Bannett, I wanted to address some specific questions and issues that a number of you have raised related to Final Exams and Final Grades.

Final Exams
You are strongly encouraged to use a grading rubric for grading these exams.  If you find that the final exam performance rubric available on the FYW@City Tech website is too cumbersome, you may want to consider creating your own, condensed rubric, using the department one as a model.  Once graded, final exams shouldbe placed in the folder in which they were distributed to you and returned toLily in N512.  These exams are kept onfile and are consulted in the case of any grade disputes.

Final Grades
Final grades, which are due by December 29, need to be reported in two ways:  first, in CUNY First, and second, in the eClassFolder.  If anyone has any questions about CUNYFirst, please feel free to contact me via email: jrodgers@citytech.cuny.edu. I willdo my best to respond and to your query quickly.  Regarding the eClass Folder, which is really now a “sheet” and not a “folder,” you will need to submit this via your CityTech e-mail account to Lily Lam: llam@citytech.cuny.edu. You will submit the file as an attachment to your e-mail to Lily and YOU MUST SAVE AND NAME the file according to the following guidelines:  CourseNumber Section Number Instructor Name Semester Code.  For Professor Rodgers’ Fall 2014 ENG1101/HD69course, the file will be named as follows:    ENG1101HD69Rodgers1149      Please follow this format EXACTLY.  The“semester code” for Fall 2014 is–somewhat inexplicably*–1149 .  For those who have been keeping their eClassFolder electronically, you can send the file as a .xlsx file.  For those who have been keeping their eClassFolder on paper, you can SCAN a copy of this, name the scanned file according to the guidelines above, and e-mail that .pdf  file to Lily.  For any additional questions about eClassFolders, please refer to the Associate Provost’s Memo on eClass Folders on the FYW@CityTech website.  For additional guidance on assigning Final Grades for FYW Courses, please refer to the section on “GRADING” in the FYW@CityTech Living Handbook for Faculty.

Thank you all for all of your work this semester. I hope you have a very good end to the semester and a wonderful break.

*For those interested in the provenance of this “code,” Professor Bannett has explained that in the language of CUNYFirst, the code refers to “1,” the millennium in which we are living, “14,” the designated year, and “9,” the month in which the fall semester generally commences.

Johannah Rodgers
Director of Composition
Asst. Professor
Department of English
New York City College of Technology
www.digitalcomposition.org
www.whatiswriting.org

ENG1101 FINAL EXAM INFORMATION AND SAMPLE EXAMS

ENG1121 FINAL EXAM INFORMATION AND SAMPLE EXAMS

COURSE FOLDERS AND COURSE GRADES: Per the beginning-of-term memo from the provost’s office, everyone must fill out and submit an ecourse folder for each course he/she is teaching.  Click here for instructions on accessing and using course folders.  At the conclusion of the semester course folders and course final exams are returned to the department secretary, Lily Lam, in N512.