Finals in the midst of a pandemic create new challenges

Finals are scheduled to continue through distance learning at CVHS this year. Finals in the midst of distance learning will be much different compared to previous years when they were done in person so some changes had to be made in the way teachers are planning to do finals in their classes.

Fall finals happen during the week of Dec. 14. The faculty has decided on 90-minute periods, longer than the 45-minute sessions of distance learning but shorter than the normal two-hour exams. 

Even the way students were taught this year was different from previous years because of shorter class periods and the amount of class periods there are in a week. Teachers can see how this could affect learning and the amount of information a student can take in which would affect the way students do finals in general. There are also teachers hoping to reduce the number of questions on their tests for that reason.

“The material that we are delivering during distance learning has to be in some way truncated and condensed, so we are really focusing on what we call essential standards,” said math teacher Jeffrey Small.

Every test could possibly be done differently depending on the teacher and/or department but a huge majority of teachers will be holding it synchronously to minimize cheating during the test. Cheating has always been a problem in past years and that passed on to distance learning for some students.

“What we as teachers are mostly relying on is the honesty of students, and cheating is a problem every year, but this year we’re aiming to be a bit more expansive,” said chemistry teacher Christopher Bing. 

With the sudden change from normal in-person school to distance learning, teachers have had to adjust the way they usually do finals since it’s obviously such a huge shift from how students would normally do them. Teachers have begun to use multiple testing platforms like Illuminate, Google Forms, and more that they might not have used in the past. 

“We’ve been preparing by talking a lot through meetings and text messages and occasionally Zooms trying to figure out what we think and feel is fair, what doesn’t allow for rampant cheating and something that takes into account what the students’ situation is and what we think is a fair way of judging you on what you learned and the effort you’ve put into class,” said history teacher Ian Rodriquez.