Final Exam: Proficiency Needed for Guaranteed Pass Is it common to guarantee students a passing course grade if they demonstrate proficiency in some subset of topics/skills on a final exam?

Note that this is in contrast to setting an upper bound on a final exam score that would guarantee a failing grade for a student, as in this question.

If this is a process you have experience with, it would be helpful to hear about the following:


Is it common for students to disregard all other assignments, choosing to gamble the whole course on just the final exam?
What and when do you let students know about this required set of skills?
How were these qualifying skills chosen, and who wrote the final exam?
What set of conditions is required to earn a "B" or an "A" in the course?
How did students do in the following course?
What other issues (good or bad) come with this model?


And, of course, do you know of research on such a grading scheme?

In particular, I am imagining an undergraduate mathematics course in the United States, where a cumulative final exam is given at the end of a semester, typically figuring heavily into the overall course grade. Exams may be written by individual instructors for their courses, or created by committee and given to all sections of the same course. Here, "passing" refers to the minimum course grade required to enroll in the subsequent course (e.g. from Algebra 1 to Algebra 2).
In my undergraduate university, we had a similar system in the mathematics department, only instead of one final exam, we had our test grades calculated based on our top X - 1 tests, where X is the number of tests.

For example, if you had four exams, only the three highest scores were counted and the lowest score was dropped. 3 100s and a 0? You get an A. 0 on the first test, and 90s on the rest? Still an A.

In my case, I had gotten three solid As in calc. On the last day of classes before finals week, the professor checked my test grades, marked a zero for my final exam, and congratulated me on my A.
He had no expectation that I would take the test because I had demonstrated proficiency three times already and he would probably not have found anything different about how well I knew calculus.

I'm sure some people will argue whether or not only actually demonstrating knowledge 75% of the course material is representative of 100% proficiency, but people have to put in at effort to reap the reward of no final. People who are driven to do well will do so regardless of any shortcuts you provide them.

The system you've described where your grade is only determined based on your performance on the final sounds like an even better deal, but I do not believe would be as effective as an X - 1 drop system, and would even harm student performance.


Students do not get accurate gauging of their own performance through their semester.
Students do not participate in class (you could end up teaching an empty room if nothing matters).
Students can potentially fail before realizing they have a problem.
If you're doing a half-semester Withdrawal setup, there's no grade reflection at the half-way point for them to consider dropping.


The only people such a system would benefit are those that have basically mastered the subject and need to retake it for some reason. Otherwise, I wholly think that it's better to have the student work their way through a course, rather than allow them to treat the final of the course as the only performance checkpoint.