Demand for PPG2 Take-home Exam Cancellation

As you know, the current situation with the PPG2 deadline schedules are putting immense stress on students from all majors. We have been hearing voices from every head stating that they have to sacrifice one course in order to achieve in the other as the schedule makes it impossible for us to strive for success at both. We need immediate action to be taken by the planners of the course and the Student desk, as acting after the course evaluations would simply be sacrifing the sucess of our year. 

The problem, and why it is impossible to cope with the current schedule:

1. The deadline for the takehome exam clashes with the final exams of the Economics major and the Law major. We cannot prepare for it in advance as the takehome exam will be published only 3 days prior to the deadline. 

2. Further, the distribution of grading percentages of the PPG2 course makes it immpossible to prioritize between the exams, together with the unresonable fact that if you fail one, you need to resit both! 

3. To move the takehome exam seems also unreasonable and unrealistic as on the 29th there is an exam for psychology, on the 31st a politics major final deadline, and the 3rd there are at least 2 other resit exam. 

4. We want to emphasize that the educative value of distributing the percentages of the assignments is valuable, only if you distribute the deadlines along the 2 month that the course took place. First in order to incentivise the students to study throughout the whole course and distribute the overload of work. In the current situation all the deadlines are concetrated to one single week! 

We suggest:

1. The cancelation of the take home exam and the redisribution of the remaining 25% grade weight between the final exam (which will be 3 hours long hence,worth more than the current 25%) and the final paper (currently 40%). 

2. Also, in any circumstance we demand the cancellation of the condition that if you fail one exam, you must resit both. 

We encourge you to fight for the quality of your education and take action to create an enviroment where the fate of your grades are on your hands not the schedules. The only option we have now is to refuse to comply with such unrealistic and unhealthy expections. 

Shoham Listenberg & Selin Uretici    Contact the author of the petition