Assignments and Exams Online

Posted by Jen Zeman on March 9th, 2009

The online assignments I had at UMUC were no different than assignments at Harford Community College which were in a traditional classroom setting. Projects/papers were a little more in-depth since UMUC is a four-year college, but formats and general content were the same. I didn’t find that the number of major papers required each semester changed – at UMUC we usually had one big paper due at the end of the semester much like it was at Harford Community College. However, UMUC did require weekly writing assignments that weren’t completed in the traditional classroom. My guess for this requirement is to make up for the in-class lecture students participate in the traditional setting. Weekly assignments for UMUC’s online classes seemed to focus on weekly readings and were an attempt to make sure you understood the material being covered.

Preparing for final exams for UMUC wasn’t any different either (when I attended UMUC, there were no mid-term exams). However, the process was vastly different. In the traditional classroom setting, everyone showed up in class on a pre-scheduled night to take the written exam all at once. At UMUC, exams were not offered online. You had to designate a place where you would take a proctored exam and have that location approved by UMUC (I would always take mine at Harford Community College’s test center). Prior to exam week, the exam would be mailed to your designated testing location. You had to then take the exam within the designated exam week. Testing personnel would then mail the completed exam back to your professor at UMUC. Exams sometimes included multiple-choice, but were largely essay-based. None were easy, but if you studied the material the professor indicated would be covered on the final exam, the exam wasn’t as painful!

Tags: assignments, exams, online, papers

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Online Assignments, Student Voices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.