How Midterm Exams Work in SOCI 130

SOCI 130, Medicine and Society has two midterm exams and no final exam. Each exam counts for 25% of your overall grade and together they count for 50% of your grade. Both exams are given on Blackboard and have four sections: Reading Quiz Questions, Definitions of Terms, Short Essays and Long Essays. Reading Quiz, Definitions, and Short Essays will be given in class but on Blackboard so the class will meet in a computer lab to take this part of the exam. A pool of five long essay questions will be available one week before the exam but on your actual exam you will only receive two of them. The long essay portion of each exam will be made available at midnight the day before the in-class exam is to be taken and you may take it at any time up until the in-class portion of the exam is done.

Your score on each exam will be a percentage score with 100% the highest you can achieve. My grade breaks may be somewhat different from what you have had in the past so please understand in advance that I will assign letter grades associated with the percentile score you achieve as follows: 93% to 100%=A; 91%-92.5%=A-; 88%-90.5%=B+; 84%-87.5%=B; 81%-83.5%=B-; 78%-80.5%=C+; 75%-77.5%=C; 72%-74.5%=C-; 68%-71.5%=D; below 67.5%=F. I will enter grades on the Blackboard gradebook using Bucknell's 4-point grade system. Thus A=4; A-=3.7; B+=3.3; B=3; B-=2.7; C+=2.3; C=2; C-=1.7; D=1; F=0.

Some of the questions for the exam will be placed on Blackboard for your use in studying one week before the in class exam takes place. These study questions will disappear from Blackboard at midnight on the day before the exam (e.g., if the exam is at 10:00 AM, the materials will disappear at 12:00 AM on the previous day). Study materials will NOT include the short essays pool. Study materials WILL include 60 reading quiz questions, sixty terms for definition, and five long essay questions. These three parts of the exam will become available at midnight on the day before the in-class exam—the same time when the study materials are taken away.

You MAY prepare answers for the definitions and long essay questions in advance and paste answers into Blackboard. HOWEVER, you must save these prepared answers as .txt files in Word rather than as .doc or .docx files. The latter files come into Blackboard with lots of HTML code and I cannot read these on my computer. If I get files with lots of programming code I'll send them back to you for you to translate. If I do not get adequate copy when I am doing the grading your exam simply will not be graded.

WHEN YOU ARE TAKING ANY PART OF THE EXAM IN BLACKBOARD, SAVE YOUR WORK IN A WORD FILE. BLACKBOARD IS PRONE TO CRASHING AND YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF YOUR WORK IF THIS HAPPENS. I WILL ACCEPT AN EMAIL COPY OF YOUR WORK.

Reading Quiz Questions. Reading quiz questions will make up one exam of the four tests that make up each midterm exam. On the exam, Blackboard will randomly select ten questions for you and you will have fifteen minutes to answer them. This part of the exam will become available at midnight the day before the in-class part of the exam takes place and it must be completed by the end of the in-class test.

You are being asked to take three reading quizzes related to class readings during the period of time covered by each midterm exam. There are a total of six reading quizzes over the course of the semester. For each exam the plan is to develop a pool of sixty reading quiz questions from the three reading quizzes. Each question is worth one point for a total of ten points on the exam. All 60 quiz questions you have had on reading quizzes will be placed on Blackboard one week before the exam. It will be available in two forms, as a 60-question quiz using the same form as the reading quizzes you have taken and as a Word file that gives the questions and responses but not the answers.

Definitions. Terms that you will be asked to define will make up one exam of the four tests that make up each midterm exam. On the exam, Blackboard will randomly select eleven terms for you and you must define ten of them. If you define all eleven terms, only the first ten definitions will count. You will have twenty minutes to define the ten terms. This part of the exam will become available at midnight the day before the in-class part of the exam takes place and it must be completed by the end of the in-class test.

Terms that make up the pool to be used on the exam appear at the top of each day's class notes. This provides guidance for where you may find the terms in our readings since all of the terms for each set of notes come from the day's reading. I'll be careful to be sure the terms actually do show up in the readings. It's up to you to find them (don't ask me to do that for you). Many of the terms are not specifically defined in the text but rather refer to concepts that you must explain. The reason this is a worthwhile exercise is that being able to state a concept clearly and concisely turns out to be strongly related to whether you actually understand the idea.

Blackboard will randomly select eleven terms for you. Define ten of them in one or two sentences.

It is a good idea to study the sixty terms provided in advance and to develop definitions for each of them. Students often are sloppy or vague with their definitions and people lose critical points on this part of the exam. Understand that each term given has a technical meaning related to the contents of the course. If you simply give a common sense or dictionary definition and it does not agree with the technical meaning from our readings your answer will be marked wrong.

Short Essay Questions. Short essay questions make up a major part of this exam. You will be given five of them randomly selected by Blackboard from a pool (usually the pool has about twelve questions in it). You must answer three of the questions and you have forty-five minutes to do so. Each question is worth 15 points and the total for this part of the exam is 45 points. You should answer each question in one or two paragraphs. This is the only part of the exam that you will complete in class and you will have the whole 50 minutes of class time to complete your answers. You may not use either notes or the book for this part of the exam, which is why it is being proctored.

Short essay questions ask you to explain major concepts we have covered during the period of the course being covered. They also include questions dealing with films. I generally provide a handout related to each film and the handouts alert you to parts of the film and bits of information you should pay attention to and take notes about. Since films are hard for you to review when you study, your notes are very important.

Short essay questions are not meant to be tricky or to question you about arcane points that are hidden in an article. We may have a reading that discusses a concept in depth but that we do not cover fully in class. This content may well show up as a short essay question since you are responsible for material in the readings even if it is not directly covered in class. Short essay questions generally have a clear, specific answer and do not ask you to do interpretive thinking—this is the task of the long essay. On the other hand, it is important for you to show that you know which readings dealt with a concept and it is important for you to discuss the idea thoroughly and accurately. In grading I pay attention to whether you demonstrate that you have done the reading and understand can explain the material in a sophisticated way. If a concept has been covered in several readings you will get a higher grade if you show that you have seen the concept in different places.

You can find sample short essay questions from last semester on this web site. My plan is to come up with different short essay questions for the present semester but some of the questions given here may show up on the exams during the present term.

Long Essay Questions. You must answer one long essay question out of two that are given to you and it will count for 35% of your exam grade. You will be provided with a pool of five long essay questions a week before the exam and Blackboard will randomly select two of these questions for you when you take the exam. You should answer each question thoroughly in four or five paragraphs, relating your answer to readings as much as you can.You will have forty-five minutes to give your long essay answer. This part of the exam will become available at midnight the day before the in-class part of the exam takes place and it must be completed by the end of the in-class test.

Long essay questions ask you to give an interpretive or theoretical answer to an open-ended question. Where the rest of the exam asks you to access and reproduce concrete material this part of the exam asks you to think sociologically and in a "big picture" framework.

That said, it always is important to show that you have read the materials and listened carefully to films and lectures. Drawing on this material and showing that you understand it is one of the things that I will look for in grading your response. Often the ideas in long essay questions have been addressed by several of our readings and perhaps the theories involved will be addressed in different ways in different sections of the course. For example, we will talk about the "social class gradient of disease" and this relates to socioeconomic inequality as well as to other forms of prejudice or oppression—prejudice and discrimination directed at minorities, at women, at immigrants, and at people with unconventional life styles. Showing how a concept relates to different concrete situations is a good thing to do.