Photo: Justin Lubin / NBC.

At the end of each unit, there will be a “take-home” unit exam.

These exams are not cumulative, focusing primarily on new material covered since the previous unit exam. However, keep in mind that some important concepts will remain relevant throughout the whole course.

Each unit exam will be made available at least 72-hours before it is official due. You will then have that full 72-hours to work on the exam.

1. Here’s What I Want You to Do
2. Here’s Why I Want You to Do It
3. Here’s How to Do It
4. Here’s How It Will Be Graded
5. 36-Hour Grace Period
6. Using Free Passes
7. Collaboration & Academic Integrity
8. Criteria for Unit Exams

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Here’s What I Want You to Do

Each unit exam has 4 short-essay problems for you to answer. Your goal for each of these is to clearly communicate your understanding of and reflection on the course material.

Your response to each problem should be between 200 to 300 words. So, with 4 problems, the total length of each finished exam is likely to run between 800 and 1,200 words. This is not an absolute rule, however, so use your own best judgment to ensure that you are providing a complete answer to each problem while not getting sidetracked with inessential details.

This means that your responses should remain focused and thorough. Please do not include include any elaborate introductions or concluding remarks. Simply respond to the problem using complete sentences (and multiple paragraphs, if needed). There is no need to type out the question for each problem, but do not forget to number your responses.

Otherwise, your unit exams should use APA-style citations to cite all your sources (this includes the required course readings), acknowledge any assistance (this includes assistance received from me outside of my videos and from the TAs), and otherwise conform to the formatting requirements.

Please use the templates for the unit exams. These templates are set up to satisfy all the formatting requirements, including a blank cover page for you to complete.

Most importantly, unit exams without a properly filled out Commitment to Academic Integrity Form will not be read and will earn an automatic 0.00 (F).

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Here’s Why I Want You to Do It

The purpose of these unit exams is to provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of and reflection on the course material. As you respond to these problems, keep in mind that the point is to show that you have a sympathetic but critical grasp of the concepts, arguments, positions, and applications we have covered so far in the course.

More specifically, each unit exam is intended to assess your progress towards all five learning outcomes for this course:

1. Identify and employ common terminology for philosophical approaches to ethics,
2. Explain and summarize important arguments within philosophical texts,
3. Apply important ethical concepts and theories to various hypothetical and real-world situations,
4. Assess competing claims concerning the demands that morality places on your actions and decisions, and
5. Reflect on your own assumptions and form more considered judgments on moral issues.

As a result, each unit exam is structured as follows:

• The first problem has you define some important course concepts and reflect on their meaning and significance,
• The second problem has you explain and/or summarize an important argument from the required course reading,
• The third problem has you connect and apply an important course concept to your own lived experiences, and
• The fourth, and final, problem has you assess competing moral demands and reflect on how you ought to respond to them. I honestly want this fourth question to be a fun, though thoughtful, exercise… we’ll see if I’m mistaken about that!

These exams will have you progressively delve deeper into these tasks as the semester unfolds.

Finally, I see all this as fulfilling my primary mission to cultivate your cognitive and affective capacities for critical reflection and practical deliberation about moral issues. Such skills will serve you well as you take up the mantle of leadership within your communities and chosen fields of study.

Photo: Justin Lubin / NBC.

Here’s How to Do It

Continue to follow my advice for the weekly quizzes by taking notes and fleshing out your responses to the reading questions. I also suggest that you consult the learning outcomes for each individual module, since I like to create exam problems based on these.

Like the quizzes, all unit exams are open note, open book, and open video—so developing your course notes remains a great way to prepare yourself for success!

Be sure to read each problem carefully, and make sure that you respond in a way that is comprehensive and demonstrates your understanding and reflection. For instance, be sure to define any and all course terminology you use in your responses. However, don’t create extra work for yourself by regurgitating information that is not relevant to the specific problem.

Since your responses should demonstrate your understanding of and reflection on material, please keep direct quotation to a minimum. That is, quoting directly from the readings, or from my remarks in the videos, would show that you know where to locate relevant information, but it does not itself demonstrate that you understand what it means or have reflected on its significance. So be sure to explain the material in your own words.

Finally, I suggest that you consult the unit exam rubric, the explanation of that rubric, and the criteria for unit exams. These should give you further insight into how to do well on the unit exams.

As always, if you have any confusions about how to succeed on these unit exams, let me know!

I do want these unit exam problems to challenge you, but I never intend to trick you or demand the impossible!

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Here’s How It Will Be Graded

Each of this exam's 4 short-essay problems is worth 20 points, for a total possible raw score of 80 points.

We will also provide feedback by writing comments and filling out a rubric. Rubrics help us assess the quality of your work based on a set of standards and lets you know the extent to which you met those expectations.

For each unit exam, I will…

1. Take your total raw score earned on that exam according to the rubric,
2. Divide that number by the total possible raw score, and
3. Normalize this ratio to the 100-point grading scale.

That will determine your grade on that unit exam. There are 6 units in the course, so you will have a total of 6 unit exam grades in this course.

Finally, at the end of the semester, your overall/final unit exam grade will be determined by taking the average of your top 5 unit exam grades.

You heard right: I will automatically drop your lowest unit exam grade when calculating your overall/final unit exam grade.

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

36-Hour Grace Period

All unit exams have an automatic 36-hour grace period. This means that you are free to finish any exam up to 36 hours after its posted due date/time without penalty. In short, all exams have an automatic 36-hour extension.

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Using Free Passes

You may use 1 free pass for an extra 24-hour extension for completing a unit exam. Please note that this is in addition to the automatic 36-hour grace period.

You may use 5 free passes to drop your lowest unit exam grade. This is in addition to the lowest unit exam grade automatically dropped at the end of the semester.

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Collaboration & Academic Integrity

Since the unit exams are meant to assess the extent to which you are achieving the learning outcomes, I expect you to do all exams on your own without assistance. Naturally, I also expect that you are not helping others with these exams either. If anyone does ask you for help, just send them to me. I’ll gladly assist them.

In short, all unit exams are closed to collaboration. Furthermore, please do not try to find solutions to these problems online.

Please remember that these exams are not group assignments. Let me know if you are struggling and I’ll gladly help!

However, if you do receive any outside assistance, you must be honest about it. This includes help from classmates, your friends/family, the Center for Excellence in Writing (CEW), as well as from me. In all these cases, you must properly cite that person and/or acknowledge them at the end of your unit exam. Completing the cover page with its Commitment to Academic Integrity Form, will remind you to do all this

Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Criteria for Unit Exams

These are the general requirements expected throughout each unit exam:

• Technical Requirements: Does the completed exam follow the formatting requirements? (To help, there are templates satisfying all of these requirements; please do make use of them!)
• Clarity: Do the responses follow standards of written English? Are words chosen for their precise meanings?
• Originality: Do the responses generally present material in the student’s own words while not wasting space with unnecessary quotation?
• Academic Integrity: Do the responses properly cite and/or acknowledge all sources? Are the standards of academic integrity followed? (If you have any questions about what these standards entail, please ask.)
  Depending on the severity of the circumstances, a problem here may also be treated as an academic integrity violation.

These are the criteria for your responses to each short-essay problem:

• Comprehension: Does the response demonstrate an accurate and complete understanding of the problem being addressed?
• Focus: Does the response focus on addressing the central issue of the problem and avoid getting sidetracked with digressions?
• Competence: Does the response incorporate pertinent details from the videos and assigned readings (like definitions, applications, and arguments)? Do those details provide explanation and/or evidence for the key claims in that response?
• Analysis: Does the response do significantly more than restate the problem and offer a brief response? Does it display clarity of thought, depth of reflection, and insight into the issue?

Unit exams will be judged as either “Excellent”, “Good”, “Acceptable”, “Mediocre”, or “Unacceptable” according to each criterion. The rubric explanation provides more details about how we judge each criterion.