The Faculty of Classics has announced that all exams, excluding Second Classical Language, will be run open book and will now exclude translation questions. Commentary and gobbet questions will remain in the open book questions. The Faculty of Classics plan to release further information about their FHS exams later this week.
This comes after an open letter penned by finalists set to take FHS Classics examinations which urged examiners to “commit to a finalized exam format” and encouraged a commitment to open book examinations by the faculty, citing the commitment by the Modern Languages and Oriental Studies faculties earlier in the academic year as an exemplar. The open letter has received 66 signatures from students so far.
Master’s exams conducted by the Faculty of Classics are also expected to take place online, although not all exams have been converted to open book. Some involving translation will be expected to be completed “without looking things up,” and will be remotely invigilated “in a relatively unobtrusive manner.” The communication noted that “it is not the case that all our Master’s exams will be ‘open-book’; each Faculty and each exam board makes its own arrangements.”
These changes have been made to both the Greats exams as well as joint schools examinations. This comes following the cancellation of first year Mods exams earlier this year, after an open letter calling the faculty to cancel exams received 90 signatories. The faculty have replaced Mods with a prelims-style exam at the end of Trinity, which also removes translation elements from text-based papers.
Image Credit: Lewis Clarke. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.
