Making Past Exams Available - Is There a Limit?

I regularly make my past exams available to students.  Not only do I make the questions from the past exams available to them, but I also give them my "exam memo" that I write following grading exams.

The exam memo is an idea I got from Ethan Leib after he posted about his exam memos over at Prawfsblawg (in a post that I would link to, but I can't seem to find it).  My version of the exam memo has a basic introduction about how the course went and the overall grading of the exam, the components, and the course.  It then has a detailed explanation of what I expected in answers to each question.  I write the memo as a narrative of my grading sheet with full details about how many points I gave for various aspects of the answer.  I talk about the law, the facts as I thought they could have been analyzed, and alternatives that students might have used in their answers that I either gave credit to or did not.  It's not a model answer, but it is a way for students to learn both a) the law and analysis the exam covered and b) how I graded them.

I make past memos available to students when studying for my exams.  From them, they can see how I write questions and what I expect in answers.  For a variety of reasons, I think that's a good idea.

But, is there a limit to how many past exams or exam memos I should make available?  Right now, I have all my past exam memos for all my courses available.  But should I stop at some point?  Or start removing the oldest ones from the database the students have access to?

On the one hand, a limited number serves the same purpose as a huge number of past exams.  They can still see how I write and what I generally expect.  A limited number also would allow me to go back to ideas or concepts from past exams more freely.

On the other hand, I'm all for giving students as many possible avenues of help as possible, so the more exams the better.  A problem on one past exam might help them understand a concept more than a problem on a different exam does, even if they test the same concepts.  Also, once I've made them available, can I really remove them?  After all, in our electronic world, nothing really can be wiped away.  And finally, at some point, the large number of exams just becomes that much more information for the students to digest, which means going back to ideas and concepts from past exams might not be any more problematic than using a case or concept from your case book.  The past exams are just another type of source material for the course.

But I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on this, so please let me know how you do it/what your thoughts are about past exams in the comments.

Comments

[Jacqueline Lipton]

An issue I have had with using past exams/past exam questions as study aids is that in some courses (eg cyberlaw, digital copyright issues, online trademark issues, online defamation and privacy etc) the law moves very rapidly and the older questions become quickly dated, thus potentially confusing students. Also things that were "hot topics" just a few years ago quickly lose the spotlight to other issues so students get confused about what I'm likely to emphasize on the exam. I generally try to give the students verbal guidance and notes on my Blackboard website about these limitations of past exams, but this is one reason I tend to select specific past exam QUESTIONS each year for students to look at, rather than entire past exam papers. And if I don't have past exam questions on a newer issue, I write some practice questions for the students on the issue.

[James Grimmelmann]

Make them all available. If you don't, someone else will. Law reviews and other student groups are famous for keeping exam archives for their members -- which means that some students will have access to your old exam memos and others won't

[Another James]

Ditto what James said.

[Vladimir]

If you post them all, how can you reuse? You don't spend your time writing new exam questions each semester, I hope!

[Spencer Waller]

I write a new one every time and I post them all.

[Marc DeGirolami]

I write a new one and post it before the students take it. I consider it the ultimate in transparency.

[David S. Cohen]

Marc - maybe I'm obtuse, but I can't tell if that's a joke or serious....

[Marc DeGirolami]

David, meant as a joke. My apologies.

In seriousness, I don't release any of my exams (a small number right now, in any event), but I do write up different exams and practice exams each year. I expect that the practice exams will be disseminated far and wide, but I don't expect that the actual exam will, since I haven't released it. I can't see how students would have access to them.

[David S. Cohen]

Marc - I should have known, but I have heard of profs who give out questions before and say that 2 of the 4 questions they give out will be on the exam, or something like that. I think, though, that I've heard of that with undergrad exams, but not with law school exams, which is why I was surprised by your post, thought it was probably a joke, but wasn't sure if someone maybe was trying this method in law school.

[Marc DeGirolami]

David -- thanks, hadn't heard of this.

I don't know if you give multiple choice questions (I do for Professional Responsibility, as a comparatively minor part of the exam), but it seems burdensome to go that route and make all questions available to the students, before or after.

[Mary]

David -- Your provision of past exams and grading memos was incredibly helpful. In my experience, availability of past exams and answers was an excellent predictor of my performance in a class. I found professors prized very different things in an exam answer. It is important to know the applicable law, but it is also important to know your audience. I found this to be even more important with adjunct professors. Unfortunately, they rarely provided such materials, perhaps because they taught infrequently.