Is it wrong to impose a challenging time constraint on exams?

Question

I've noticed that many professors seem to impose extremely tight time limits on their exams, even though the subject in question would never have such extreme time constraints in real life. For example, I cannot imagine a situation where I have to write 50 lines of code on a piece of paper in less than 15 minutes.

Is it reasonable for me to complain about such constraints or is it normal to expect fast exam performance from students?

Note that I'm not talking about the actual exam difficulty, just the time constraint built around it.

Answer 1

The objective of an assessment can vary from one lecture to another. Quite often, the point is simply to validate whether the expected learning outcomes of the lecture have been met. For instance, if an expected outcome is to know almost by heart how to write an array sorting program, then it's quite reasonable to ask to write a small amount of lines of code in a fixed amount of time.

If, on the other hand, the expected outcome is at a higher level of understanding (in the sense of Bloom's taxonomy), for instance by asking to design and assess a new data structure to handle a new problem, then it could be more reasonable to expect more time.

The problem you are referring to by "would never have such extreme time constraints in real life" is addressed with the notion of authentic learning (Rule, 2006), which identifies the four following themes for a learning to be authentic:

1) the activity involves real-world problems that mimic the work of professionals in the discipline with presentation of findings to audiences beyond the classroom;

2) open-ended inquiry, thinking skills, and metacognition are addressed;

3) students engage in discourse and social learning in a community of learners; and

4) students are empowered through choice to direct their own learning in relevant project work.

Authentic learning comes with its upsides and downsides (the reference linked acts as a survey paper, if you are interested), so it's not necessarily the best approach. In particular, (Lombardi, 2007) note that the reliance on traditional instruction is not simply a choice made by individual faculty—students often prefer it. For instance, not everybody wants to be tested on writing code in a highly complex environment, using bugged code written by other people, implementing specifications that are sub-optimal, but the client want them in this way, which could be a typical real world situation.

I don't think you should complain about time constraints, but if you believe that authentic learning would be more beneficial to you and your fellow students, you should probably discuss with the professor about the objective of the assessment.

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Lombardi, M. M. (2007). Authentic learning for the 21st century: An overview. Educause learning initiative, 1(2007), 1-12.

Rule, Audrey C. (2006). The Components of Authentic Learning. Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 3, Number 1, Pages 1-10, August 2006

Answer 2

This is not really an answer but some educated guess. Most instructors do not plan to impose a challenging time constraint for exams. Usually we tend to overestimate how easy is the exam. The younger is the instructor, the more optimistic he/she is about students and more eager to write interesting questions. For subjects that require lots of drilling, tight time constraints are helpful in the sense one can immediately screen out the students who did lots of homework/problem solving from those who have to think from scratch.

Answer 3

In my experience, challenging time constraints are a hindrance because they induce panic, which inhibits the ability to reason through a problem and make a thoughtful answer to it.

I'm currently tutoring two students on grammar for a business English class. Their teacher sets 100 questions for each 50 minute exam. That comes down to 30 seconds for each question. This tactic makes a mockery of all my attempts to teach them the logic and reason behind grammar. The students barely have enough time to figure out what's being asked of them, let alone apply any rules or reasoning principles.

The students feel this is unfair; they learned the rules, did the homework (which average 300 questions per set), and now they're failing the tests because they can't go through the whole process of reading a problem, conjuring up the correct rule, and finding the correct answer in 30 seconds. This causes bitterness and low morale. It makes them feel that all the work they put in to the homework was a waste of time.

It's not feasible in the standard method of testing to give students unlimited time, and most schools don't have the resources to set aside computer labs for exams so CS students can write code on them. But there's no reason to make the time constraints more of a problem than they need to be. Make the questions easier; put fewer questions; and split long questions into multiple parts, which are graded independently. I've found all of these reduce the pressure, and the second two options let you still put challenging problems on the exam.

In short, yes, I do think it's wrong to impose a challenging time constraint on an exam. Not only because it's unrealistic, but also because it puts artificial limits on the students' performance, which the students will recognize as artificial and react badly to. Unless you're trying to teach people to program on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise during a Red Alert while an anomaly is sucking the ship in, lighten up the time limits.

Answer 4

It is reasonable to bring up the issue of exam difficulty, although I would try to bring it up in a way that is not accusing the professor of being unfair, perhaps bringing it up as part of a question of how to study next time, or asking if this is going to be typical of his exams.

It may be that the professor sees value in the tight time constraint that you aren’t aware of. For example, they might be asking something very challenging, knowing that very few students will succeed completely. It is very common to have test questions ranging from fairly easy to very difficult, with the expectation that most students will miss the most difficult questions. Partially correct answers show partial understanding. In this case, a coding question with a time limit will show up problems that might be harder to see in an assignment where a student has unlimited time. One sort of issue that will show up is that there's big difference between the uncompleted code of somebody who starts writing random code in the hopes it will sort itself out as it comes, vs somebody who takes 3 minutes to plan an approach, and the rest of the time implementing that approach. But if all you are looking at is the final result is a problem set, the difference is less obvious, even if the first person takes twice as long to reach the same result. There could be other possible benefits to this type of question as well.

It’s also possible that the professor isn’t aware of just how difficult the test is, and your question will bring that to his attention. Although if nobody finishes that question, that alone will give most instructors a clue that their estimated difficulty was off. But generally, exams have very little to do with career prep, and more to do with assessing student ability.

Answer 5

Opinions on this vary, but personally I prefer to avoid cases where the major difficulty of the exam is the time limit. If the time constraints are too challenging then the process becomes a test of who can write the fastest, rather than who knows the material well. Personally, I prefer to give a time constraint that allows students to think about each question and go at a reasonable pace, with questions that range from easy marks to hard marks, to test their actual understanding of the subject matter. I have also adopted the following rules for time limits in exams:

• Exam length for undergraduate-level courses: As a rule-of-thumb, the teacher should be able to correctly complete the exam in one-third of the time allocated to students, from a position of initial ignorance of the answers. So if you are setting a three-hour exam, you should be able to do the whole thing, including all working out and writing up of answers, in one hour.

• Exam length postgraduate-level courses: As a rule-of-thumb, the teacher should be able to correctly complete the exam in one-half of the time allocated to students, from a position of initial ignorance of the answers. So if you are setting a three-hour exam, you should be able to do the whole thing, including all working out and writing up of answers, in one-and-a-half hours.

These time limits have served me well in my courses, and it ensures that I am testing students on their knowledge of the material, rather than their ability to write really fast.

Answer 6

Some professors seem to be using this paradigm of testing; instead of giving ample time so that it's reasonable to finish the test, they'll intentionally make it so even the best-prepared testee will only have time to finish 75% of the test. Of course it will be curved based on this. It separates those who know the material really well from the people who only know a little, and apparently creates a pretty good bell curve, which seems to be what everyone is after these days.

Answer 7

It's not uncommon to have challenging time constraints. Some American tests like the ACT and SAT have a tight limit built in to reward students for being fast.

However, many of these tests are scaled, in that no matter how well or how badly the students do, the grades are normally distributed..

Answer 8

Tests with tight time constraints are probably created by instructors who are not familiar with personality profiles like those revealed in Meyers-Briggs personality tests. People with some personality types tend to test slowly but deliberately, while others will test quickly but haphazardly. Of course, I'm also sure that there are those that test quickly and deliberately, as well as slowly and haphazardly. But, in the end, if instructors thought about it, they would find that they most likely prefer students go slowly but deliberately, thereby raising their percentage of correct answers. I imagine that most employers prefer slow production in order to achieve a high rate of perfection, thereby limiting wasted time and material.