About the final exam

SPECS FOR THE FINAL EXAM:

1. The final exam will be cumulative, from the first day of classes until the end of the semester, including the next two weeks of material.
2. You will get 2 hours, 50 minutes, just like the lecture sections.
3. However, it is scheduled for the "free period" during final exam week, so availability is slightly different: 1:00 - 9:50 PM, so slightly smaller window of time than a midterm.
4. It will be double the size of a midterm, so 80 points, maybe 80 questions or so.
5. You cannot reschedule it. Get your job schedule, travel schedule etc. re-arranged now!

Points UP

Your final exam score is up.

All pointage (regular and bonus) is now tallied up in the Semester total points row on your My Grades page.

Bonus points work

For those of you who want to earn some bonus pointage, you can work through the Chemical Bondling Learning Module H. It is meant as a synthesis study set, putting together a lot of other concepts from the semester, but I will also offer a 10 point bonus section on the final exam, based on this mini-chapter. So you could make 110/100 on the final exam this Saturday.

Final exam scores

I forgot that Sunday morning they shut down Webcourses for maintenance. So converting your 84 point exam to a 100 point equivalent is still on my to-do list.

What I eventually will be doing is:

1. Divide your exam score by 84. This gives me your percentage. E.g., 69/84 = 0.82142857
2. I multiply that percentage by 100. So in the example, I would get 69/84 → 82.142857.
3. Then, to keep things simple, I round UP to the next whole number. To complete the example 69/84 → →83/100 for the final exam score conversion.

So this is why you will see some hipsy-dipsy maneuvering with rows in your My Grades page.... as soon as Webcourses comes back on.

Bonus points; My Grades weirdness.

On a final exam, I usually set up maybe 4 or 5 bonus point opportunities. Therefore, since I could not squeeze in some Ch. 24 exam questions etc. on the final, I converted your Chapter 24 mini-quiz work into bonus points, 1, 2, 3 or 4 bonus points based on your average for the 4 attempts. The bonus points appear in "Bonus activity X" row of your My Grades page.

And Webcourses just burped on me again. >:|

UNbelievable! Well, the bonus data are in there. Also, your final exam score is released now.

I will be working on grades for the next two days or so. For this reason, you might see a bonus point file disappear and reappear suddenly, a midterm change position or some similar weirdness on your My Grades page. Do not stress out -- iit is just a sign of me arranging and rearraging data in the klunky Webcourses grade book!

Exam

Unfortunately, the network burped on me as I was saving exam questions for the final. As a result, there are only 84 points on it, and none of the chapter 24 questions I wanted to assign for bonus. However, the questions that are in there are comprehensive, other than Ch. 24. Therefore,

1. I will scale the 84 points up to 100 points, and give everyone the benefit of rounding UP to the nearest whole number score, and
2. I will figure out another method for scoring bonus points from the chapter 24 mini-quiz.

So do your best on a slightly shorter exam than I had planned, and I will square everybody away grade-wise on this exam.

Final exam today

Final Exam today
100 points

1. available at 1 PM
2. must finish by 11:59 PM

New learning module UP

Your next learning module, featuring chapter 23 concepts of the atomic spectra, is up.

By the final exam, we will cover chapters 23 and 24.

Side note: the final examination is cumulative: any topic since January, including chapters 23 and 24.

Semester pointage is UP.

You can take a look at the "Total semester points" row of your My Grades page in Webcourses. It now includes all the exam points, including yesterday's final exam, plus all the bonus points you may have earned.

Side note on bonus points:

1. The Ch. 24 bonus came about through the average score of your Ch. 24 mini-quiz attempts.
   1. One bonus point if your avg. was 6.50 or higher;
   2. Two bonus points if your avg. was larger than 12.50
2. There are some bonus points embedded in your final exam score, which is why Webcourses considers it an 88 point exam. To see if you earned the bonus points here, just select the final exam's "View Submission" method from the Assessments page and view your attempt -- specifically, items 69-72. These bonus points are embedded in your final exam score and come into the "Total semester points" through the "Exams subtotal" row.

Later this week, after giving final exams to my lecture sections, I will start posting your semester grades. But for right now you can get a good idea from your "Total semester points" figure.

FINAL EXAM TODAY

The final exam is ready for 1:00 PM launch. Everything else will go off the air at that time.

About the final

I will be working on grades today, this morning for a bit and then this afternoon a bit more. So do not be surprised to see rows vanish and reappear on your My Grades page in Webcourses! It's just me mucking about with the grade book.

I decided to keep things simple and embedd the bonus activity X in the actual final exam. It is still officially a 50 point exam, but now you can score over 100%, up to 54 points on it. SWEEEET.

However, the bonus activity X being embedded in the final exam does not change the semester baseline total: that's still 200 points. So I add up all your exam points and bonus points (if any) and then look up your grade on the points table:

A	185 points
A-	180 points
etc.

I hope to have semester grades computed by supper time.

Final exam = GO!

Your final exam is now running, available for 90 minutes, and you must finish by 11:59 PM tonight.

WHAT A SEMESTER!!!!!!!! Now you must close out a wild and woolly Summer B by crushing my final exam.

Tomorrow morning, maybe lunch time, I will start working on your semester grades etc.

Suggest question for Exam 3 (bonus)

The "Suggest question for Exam 3 (bonus)" discussion is open in Webcourses. You can earn a bonus point, one half of a percentage on your semester grade, IF it is good enough to use on Exam 3.

By the way: I did not use any of your suggested questions on Exam 2. Lots of good ones, a few I had to reject outright. However, I did like one of the questions a LOT, but it is better for a final exam than for a midterm. SO...... One of these questions will be on the final exam. And that student will get the bonus point after the final exam on Aug. 6.

Chapters, chapters, chapters

I made up a PDF of the chapters that will be covered on each exam, including the final exam. Look for the coffee cup icon in our Webcourses home page.

Final exam grades are now UP

Your final exam scores are now UP. Look in your My Grades page in Webcourses.

I will be grading and messing with writing assignments Monday and Tuesday. I will announce changes, updates here.

Final exam is GO for 1:00 PM launch.

The final exam is ready for 1:00 PM launch. Everything else will go off the air at that time.

Look for the blue mailbox with scary eyeballs

Your semeter review quiz is in the Week 16 learning module, now visible and active. Go take a look and remember: the review quiz is only one tool out of MANY that you should use to get ready for the final exam on Saturday afternoon.

The Week 16 module also has schedule and grade info to double check. Look for the scary eyeballs blue mailbox icon.

Final exam schedule for all classes

Public Service Announcement:

Here is the schedule for final exam week, for all classes.

University of Central Florida Exam Schedule

Make sure that you know all of your exam times, and if there is a conflict with your PSC1121 final exam, let me know. It happens occasionally. We will coordinate with the other instructor.

WARNING: if this is your first semester at UCF, read that schedule carefully!! It is set up weirdly, in my opinion.

By the way, we stick to our exam schedule by necessity, so do not ask me to take it early or late. Your section has one and only one time for its final exam, as printed out on the fall semester schedule and the "grades and points" pages from Day One.

"BONUS Design a question for Final Exam" discussion is open.

"BONUS Design a question for Final Exam" discussion is open now, and you can post your contributions now.

Create a good multiple choice question for the final exam, from chapters 20-22 electromagnetism concepts. Same procedures as before:

1. asterisk * to signify correct option;
2. chapter and page number for studying the answer.
3. Two bonus points if I use yours on the final exam.

Last major learning module is now UP.

Your week 15 learning module is now UP in Webcourses. It is the last major learning module for the semester. Post your questions about it in the Discussions area.

Next week, I think I will put together a mini-review quiz to get you back into the flow of all the topics from Exams 1, 2 and 3. Remember: the final exam covers EVERYTHING this semester!!!!!