I also confirm that lab final exams are difficult to design and
administer but they certainly make a difference in how the student
approaches the lab course.
If the lab exam counts for 20%-50% of the lab course, the students
tend to worry a bit about retaining information during the semester.
I will list a few examples of the types of questions in the lab exam.
In the E/M lab course for engineers and science majors, many of the
questions had to do with electricity. I designed a "black box" in
which I put together a RLC circuit that the students connected to
scopes, generators, multimeters, power supplies according to how
they learned to do the measurement
in the course (the question asked was to determine
the unknown values of the components ). This was
done "closed book"
one semester and "open book" another semester. Other questions in
this course included finding the frequency, period, voltage P-P or
RMS of a waveform on a scope screen which I copied onto
the exam paper. There were also questions on procedures used during
the lab course.
In the Mechanics lab course, I distributed metal blocks and had the
students determine the density and therefore the type of metal. I also
had various types of springs and had them find "k" spring constant of
these "unknown" springs.
One thing that I always did was to personally grade each lab exam
(the E/M lab course has over 600 students, WHEW.....). This was
a little tough sometimes but I knew that the grading
was consistant from section to section and
any question in the grading was always resolved by me.
I encourage everyone to try giving a lab exam final
at least once. You will be surprised of the grades (or what the
students really know) at the end of the semester.
GOOD LUCK !
Santos Ramirez
Physics Department
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX U.S.A.
ramirez@phys.tamu.edu