Consultation des copies

I'm procrastinating preparing for a job interview, but this was part of my day today and I was struck again by the differences between France and America.

First off, a couple explanations.
The huge majority of University classes in France end with a proctored final exam (sometimes an oral exam). Even at a Masters level, students sit for usually a 2 or 3 hour exam. The many research papers I did my senior year for all my classes are reserved for research track students who plan on pursuing a doctorate.

Once the exams are over, professors have about 2 weeks to correct the exams, then I need about a week to enter the grades and calculate the GPAs (yeah, it's kind of an old complicated database and calculating grades is not automatic).

The grades are then published online through the University intranet, and students can see what their results are. A lot of times this is the first time they really know how they did in a class because a) there was little to no continuous assessment during the course and b) the final exam usually counts for something like 60 or 70% of the final grade. Student often bomb the exam after getting okay homework grades, and they end up with a below pass grade.

This being France and all, the majority of classes have a "second chance" exam period where you take the written exam again to hopefully improve your grade.

But right after the grades are published (and weeks or months before the make-up exams), students are allowed to see their graded exam, the "consultation des copies".

Traditionally this is done with the professor in a rather rigid procedure where students sign up with the administrative assistant, and then, on one day only, can look at their graded exam in front of the professor (usually in an office or a classroom) and ask any questions about wrong answers (especially if you have to re-do the exam). Less than rarely a mistake in the number of points is discovered and I update the student's grades and semester GPA.

This procedure is partially necessary due to the fact that exams are anonymous and the administrative assistant needs to look up which copy belongs to each student who has questions about it.

My office mate is currently organizing her 'consultation des copies', and she kind of guffawed at the number of students who wanted to see their graded exams "when they already passed!". Because believe it or not, there's an unwritten French rule that if you pass, or get more than 12 out of 20, you shouldn't be bothering people by requesting to see your exam. I've even had professors get upset about students coming to look at their exam when they had 13 or 14 because this was clearly "a waste of their time".

Students don't get to keep their exams of course, they can only look at them. Since about once a semester a professor realizes he or she forgot a point or two for the grade, I think there's a general paranoia that you can't give back an exam because a student could change the answers or add more text and then come back and claim that more points are due.

Since this whole procedure is rather difficult for non-French students, one of the "international standards" the program I run is trying to live up to is to reduce the barriers for students getting feedback on their work. This means I now let students come and look at their exams with me, without any restrictions on the grades. If students have additional questions, I set up additional "consultations" with professors.

When I told a professor that none of the students needed to meet with him because they had read his comments in my office, he was surprised because "the rule is that it has to be with a professor". This seemed kind of strange to me (I mean, as long as someone is making sure they aren't changing their exam to try to get more points...), so I started looking into it.

As far as I can tell, there is no official rule or law that states that University exams can only be consulted in the presence of the instructor. Students do have a limited amount of time to request to see an exam (usually about 2 weeks), and as an administrative document Universities are required to hold on to it, but there is no obligation that I can find that a professor be present. The internal University rules usually detail the various steps in exams, but if they are like the "Charte des Examens" where I work, they are sufficiently vague with things like "Access to graded exams will be available as announced to students" with the onus on faculty and staff to detail the procedures.

So there you have it. I guess the French take the view of "Phew! I passed!" and then try not to bother anyone rather than "I only got 13 out of 20? What could I have done to get 15 or 17? How can I do better?". Be content with what you have vs Never be satisfied and always find a way to improve