The UW’s School of Art + Art History + Design’s novel coronavirus policy first published March 5 said the growing outbreak was having only a “modest” impact on instruction in the school. But there was a caveat.

“This is an evolving situation, both in Washington and globally, so circumstances could change rapidly,” a message on the school’s website reads.

It appears the circumstances did indeed change rapidly for the school after the university’s announcement March 6 to end in-person class meetings for the last two weeks of the quarter. In a message to students shortly after, the director of the School of Art + Art History + Design, Jamie Walker, said grades would be issued on a credit/no-credit basis based on work already completed “after careful consultation with faculty and staff and attention to fairness and equity.”

Credit/no-credit means students either pass or fail the class, but are not issued a numeric grade. It is also noted as such on one’s transcript.

Christy, a junior who didn’t want her last name published for privacy reasons, called this decision “incredibly unfair” and noted that it would make her ineligible for the Dean’s List because she wouldn’t have enough credits graded numerically.

“I know I’m just one student, but I worked so hard just to be able to attend this school, so this feels so incredibly insulting to me,” Christy, also a transfer student, said. “In a way, it feels like undermining all the hard work I’ve done to get to this point.”

After criticism from students, the school changed its policy to leave grades up to the discretion of individual professors depending if they can be fairly calculated based on work done to this point.

This is just one particularly stark example of how the university’s move to end in-person gatherings is fundamentally altering how courses are structured and graded, with many making finals optional and others eliminating them altogether.

While humanities and social science classes are feeling less of an impact from the change as their last assignments are often essays or exams more easily made available online, STEM and business classes are struggling more to make that shift.

In a unique decision, a finance class is moving forward with its remote final, but doing so using Zoom video conferencing in which students must film themselves taking the test, which some students see as an odd way to enforce anti-cheating measures and as a potential invasion of privacy. This comes after the UW procured a $200,000 license to make Zoom Pro free for all students and staff last week.

Jarrad Harford told The Daily this decision isn’t perfect, but enables him to maintain the integrity of the exam environment by allowing students to ask questions and keep the test format the same.

CSE 142 and 143, the introductory computer science classes each with hundreds of students, have canceled their final exams and students’ grades will be calculated based on scores earned so far. Professor Stuart Reges, who teaches CSE 143, said in an email that this decision was made out of fear of possible cheating on an online test.

Grades in the second class play a large role in the admissions process into the computer science department, a notoriously competitive major on campus.

“There really are no great options under unprecedented circumstances like these and I considered a variety of solutions,” computer science professor Hal Perkins said in an email to The Daily. “Given that there is a good deal of data about student performance collected throughout the quarter, I decided to cancel the exam.”

Perkins said his decision was based on a recommendation from the Allen School’s student advisory council. Professors for several other upper-level computer science classes are making similar decisions to cancel finals.

This puts a lot of students who were relying on finals to boost their grades at a disadvantage.

For students in MATH 112, the higher of their two midterms scores replaces their final. Students with grades above 2.0 or below 1.0 will be given no further opportunities to improve their grade.

“If your grade is between 1.1 and 1.8, then you are in what I consider ‘passing range’ and will have an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of the material and pass the course,” Jennifer Taggart, a lecturer in the math department, wrote in an email to her students.

Classes in the introductory calculus series serve as prerequisites to many of the capacity-constrained majors on campus, and due to classes being moved online because of COVID-19, they have been forced to cancel finals.

To counteract the negative effect this might have on students’ grades, professors are changing how they curve classes to boost scores.

MATH 126, the third class in the calculus series, typically has a median GPA of 2.7 to 3.1.

What campus resources are closing and what’s staying open amid coronavirus With campus set to be more sparsely populated for the final two weeks of winter quarter beca…

“I know that many of you were hoping to improve your grade by doing well on the final,” a calculus professor wrote to students. “Essentially I’m going to compute grades as if that happened.”

The median is being set higher, resulting in more 4.0s being given out and fewer sub-2.0s.

The move to online exams and coursework raises other concerns given that many students don’t have easy access to the technology needed to do work away from school. Meanwhile, most UW libraries, which house ample tech resources, are operating on reduced hours.

“If we go to remote for a couple of weeks, that’s an equity issue,” ASUW President Kelty Pierce said before Friday’s announcement. “Not all of our students have access to a laptop. Not all of our students have internet at home. Not all of our students can sit around waiting to do their classes online.”

One political science professor made the online final untimed and optional because “this is an extraordinary situation and causes significant disruption, uncertainty, and stress.” This means that if students decide not to take the exam, their grade will be based on assignments completed up to that point.

“There may be variation in student access to computers and the internet during the exam period,” the professor wrote to students Friday evening. “My goal in making the take-home final optional is to provide maximum flexibility to each student and the ability to make a choice that works best for them given the constraints and challenges they now face.”

Editor-In-Chief Mira Petrillo contributed to this report.

Reach Science Editor Ash Shah and News Editor Jake Goldstein-Street at news@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @itsashshah @GoldsteinStreet

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