Advocacy Proposal

I want to address a problem facing college students every semester, the final exam week. To elaborate, I believe the current structure most courses have by enforcing a final cumulative exam that makes up a large percentage of one's grade is highly archaic. The mental health of students is now at the forefront of a lot of significant institutions. This past year I have received more emails regarding students' mental health than any other semester. The effect finals have on the mental health of students can loom large. This project's scope will be evaluated through the range of academic and mental health of students in college. I'll be sure to exclude extraneous topics such as the academic/education system as a whole. I am proposing a complete eradication of cumulative exams. If professors want to gauge what students have learned from an entire semester, other metrics can be leveraged for evaluation. Group projects and final reports are just a couple of solid options that can take over a three-hour exam. I feel that this proposal only can affect change through the students being at the front of the movement. However, my target audience will be the faculty who engage in these ancient final exam practices. My central message for this advocacy campaign will be to eliminate finals week for all college students at every institution as it negatively impacts students' mental health.

In terms of background information, there are many reports and studies that have been done that depict the correlation between mental health and final exams. As stated by medium.com, "High-stake exams have been linked to the rise in test anxiety among students. This affects students who suffer from anxiety negatively and are less likely to score as high as their cucumber-cool counterparts." (Cianculli 2018). The reasons why this problem is essential to address are endless. There is a correlation between high-stake exams and anxiety in students. Stress can lead to or perpetuate more mental health issues as time goes on. Furthermore, those who have issues with anxiety will be penalized by taking high-stakes exams and will not be able to display their actual level of knowledge and understanding. Students will most of the time cram and memorize as much as possible from material learned earlier in the semester and will not have truly learned. As time has moved on, there have been advancements made by certain professors and institutions. As I stated earlier, group projects and final reports spaced out through the entire semester are a better form of evaluation. This has proved to be effective because there is no period where everything comes to a tilt. Utilizing this methodology broadly to every course and university would be incredibly beneficial because it is already being employed. It is just not used in every class, and some still are entirely traditional.

I am trying to reach the professors who have course structures that evaluate their students primarily through final examinations. Professors should care about whether or not their evaluation methods are effective or not. Studies prove that cumulative high stakes final exams do not produce effective results for those who deal with anxiety and test-taking anxiety. Furthermore, there are alternative methods that may prove to be more successful and will yield better results. As stated previously, students need to be at the forefront of this movement. The only way to enact change is to have the party facing adversity stand up against it. A national walk-out of Finals Week could present a wake-up call. Students have the power to make this movement grow legs and become an issue that needs to be addressed.