Having learned a lot from tweeting about law school grading policies this semester, I thought I'd pivot to exam format. This will obviously vary by class, but for me, it's specific to my Federal Courts class—for which I (almost) always give an in-class, scheduled, four-hour exam.

For obvious reasons, in-class is out. And a scheduled 4-hour exam is, to me, a real issue given how many of my students are (1) in different time zones; (2) not necessarily able to commit to a specific four-hour window; and (3) facing technology challenges not present at school.

I feel the same about a scheduled 8-hour exam, even if the actual test is meant to take only 4 hours (which is on me). We have "floating" exams at UT, but that still presupposes a single, short period where at least half of the time can be committed to dedicated exam writing.

This has led me to lean toward a floating 24-hour take-home for an exam that *should* take 4 hours. I *hated* 24-hour take-homes as a student for all of the obvious reasons (including my hyper-type-A-spend-23.5-hours-on-it mentality).

But it seems the least-worst solution here.

A big part of that is *because* of our changed grading policy. A 24-hour take-home comes with all kinds of baked-in inequities and unfairness based upon students' varying circumstances.

But when my students are all either passing or failing, those inequities seem less fatal...

...especially compared to the inequities that any of the other exam formats would produce. Of course, I could scrap an exam altogether, but I actually think *other* modes of assessment, especially short papers, would impose *greater* burdens on many of my students at this point.

All of this is to say that I'm leaning heavily toward a floating, 24-hour take-home during finals—with the onus on me to write an exam that can reasonably be completed in four hours (and word limits!!).

But I'm very interested in how others are approaching this. Thoughts?

/end