Posted by In Finland we usually just have lessons (where you can go or not go), in medicine you of course have some labs and other practical things. However we don’t usually have more than one exam that’s at the end of the course.
Here in States one course lasts one semester we have like 5-10 exams / quizzes per course in one course. At the end of the semester we have final exams, before spring break we have midterm exams and about every week there are smaller quiz from some of the courses (of course this depends on how many courses you have and do they have few or a lot quizzes – in my courses there are approximately 2-6 quizzes per course during the semester).
Last week I had two quizzes and same thing this week. Here they are usually about 20-50 questions – multiple choices, right or wrongs and short essays. The first one was American Popular Culture History and the quiz was like 25 questions, all multiple choice with options A-D. That one was really tough for me historical names, movie names, book names, etc. I have never been too good to learn names or dates. Especially foreign names can be really hard to remember and distinguish for other foreign names. Fortunately I’m quite sure that history course is not the most important one what comes to my future studies and career.
Next quiz I had was epidemiology. It was technically harder – open questions and filling missing names to sentences. What I just said about foreign names? 😀 I hope it’s enough that the teacher understand who I meant. That one had about 20 questions.
Then my favorite quizzes! I had quiz of photography on Monday and it was just pairing words and descriptions. That was quite easy for me because I already knew all basic terminology of photography and if you were awake and made notes in classes you learned all you need. I already love that course. This week we will start to work with Photoshop CS6, I’m really looking forward to that!
Back to quizzes: Last one was made online with Moodle. We all went to classroom to do that. It was open book and open notes so it wasn’t too difficult. However there were some tricky questions. They all were multiple choices with four options (A-D). In some of the questions I felt that there was like multiple right answers or not like clear answers. I got my score right away and it was 41/50 so it went fine though.
In total: they have a lot of quizzes and exams here. Those can be done with pencil and paper or via Internet. And like everywhere else there are different question types. I felt that we were quite well informed about what kind of questions we will have. You usually should study about 50-200 pages from book + notes for one quiz. It’s doable (as long as your not sick or having too much other things going on).
Note: I have only studied in Ohio Northern University and University of Eastern Finland, the system might vary between universities. I would love to hear if the system is different in other universities.
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