Mid-Term Quiz Format and Contact Information

This page is intended to assist you in the preparation for the Midterm Quiz scheduled to begin Monday of Week 7. This exam will be formatted as an open-book quiz that you can complete on your computer with the Respondus system. This exam format is different from the way that I usually format such exams due to the difficulties of administering an exam online with students in many locations and taking the exam at different times. I am aware that this might cause some anxiety problems, and I apologize for them, but this is our system for this course. All questions on the exam will be drawn from material covered in my lecture videos and/or from the relevant chapters of the Coursepack and slides.

Preparing for the Quiz:

Start early; if it's already too late for this, you probably have an enormous task ahead of you over the next week. Prepare diligently; assume that the quiz will be challenging. One should not assume that quiz questions will involve simple duplication of material in the textbook, Coursepack, notes, slides or other materials. Viewing and understanding of lecture videos, careful study of the Coursepack, working through all problems in the Coursepack and sample exams should be very helpful in preparing for the exam. In addition, some ingenuity and analytical skills will be required to answer certain questions. It will be useful for students' grasp of the material to be strong enough to answer questions quickly, as the time to exam completion will be limited to 6 hours. This point is key; you must know the material well enough to be able to work and make progress quickly on the quiz.

Do not memorize materials, but make sure that you understand everything well enough to competently explain it to me or anyone else with your background as well as to solve problems that I have made available to you. The practice version of the quiz is intended to be representative of the style of actual examination questions and structures; actual exam coverage will extend to all material covered as of the end of Module 6 and Chapter 7 of the Coursepack. Each quiz, either practice version or actual version should be considered to only cover only a limited "randomly selected" range of course material. Also note that many students feel that their actual quiz is much more difficult than the practice version. This seems particularly true when practice quiz solutions sheets are viewed along with the practice quiz (even a quick glance makes a big difference) or when the practice versions of the quiz is not taken under actual exam conditions. I note that this occurs even when I switch practice and actual quiz versions in different semesters.

Material covered by the quiz will pertain to all lecture videos and Coursepack readings listed for the course prior to March 6.

Work through all problems in the Coursepack, being certain not to view solutions until you have completed your work. This is important. Working through all of the end of chapter problems in the Coursepack will be very useful for preparing for the quiz, but only if the problems are used correctly. This might be time-consuming, but the effort should pay off on exam results. Solutions follow the problems in the Coursepack. Spreadsheets offered on the Blackboard site are likely to be useful as well. While not a necessity, I suggest that you wait until you have made most of your preparations for the quiz before attempting the practice quiz. Allow two hours for each the sample quiz.

Quiz Format and Administration:

I would be pleased to speak with you over Skype (johnlteall), Zoom or by telephone, though we should first arrange a time to speak via email. Of course, I can be e-mailed at jteall1@jhu.edu or jteall@jteall.com. Feel free to contact me to resolve your questions and problems.  Don't waste time if you can get an easy explanation from me on an issue.  The format of the quiz will be mostly, but not entirely problem-oriented, with one or a small number of short essay questions. You would write solutions to problems, showing all work for partial credit should you make an error.

I consider the number of questions to be unimportant, though my quizzes and exams tend to have between 7 and 12 questions. What is more important, I think, is how much time you will require to answer the questions relative to how much time you have available to answer the questions. I try to write online exams for a quantitatively-oriented finance course to require 2 hours for a well-prepared student to complete. Students who have prepared less diligently will probably require a more than 3 hours to complete the quiz (not enough time) and poorly prepared students would probably not be able to complete the exam within twice the allowed amount of time. So, I usually allow every student 2 hours to complete the quiz from the time that they download the quiz. You should get a better sense for this once you see the sample or practice version of the quiz.

Final Exam Format

This page is intended to assist you in the preparation for the Final Exam scheduled for the final week of the semester. This exam will be formatted as an open-book exam that you can complete on your computer with the Respondus system. This exam format is different from the way that I usually format such exams due to the difficulties of administering an exam online with students in many locations and taking the exam at different times. I am aware that this might cause some anxiety problems, and I apologize for them, but this is our system for this course. All questions on the exam will be drawn from material covered in my lecture videos and/or from the relevant chapters of the Coursepack and slides.

Preparing for the Exam:

Start early; if it's already too late for this, you probably have an enormous task ahead of you over the next week. Prepare diligently; assume that the exam will be challenging. One should not assume that exam questions will involve simple duplication of material in the textbook, Coursepack, notes, slides or other materials. Viewing and understanding of lecture videos, careful study of the Coursepack, working through all problems in the Coursepack and sample exams should be very helpful in preparing for the exam. In addition, some ingenuity and analytical skills will be required to answer certain questions. It will be useful for students' grasp of the material to be strong enough to answer questions quickly, as the time to exam completion will be limited to 4 hours. This point is key; you must know the material well enough to be able to work and make progress quickly on the exam.

Do not memorize materials, but make sure that you understand everything well enough to competently explain it to me or anyone else with your background as well as to solve problems that I have made available to you. The practice version of the exam is intended to be representative of the style of actual examination questions and structures; actual exam coverage will extend to all material covered from the beginning of Module 8 and Chapter 8 of the Coursepack to the end of the course (Module 13). Each exam, either practice version or actual version should be considered to only cover only a limited "randomly selected" range of course material. Also note that many students feel that their actual exam is much more difficult than the practice version. This seems particularly true when practice exam solutions sheets are viewed along with the practice exam (even a quick glance makes a big difference) or when the practice versions of the exam is not taken under actual exam conditions. I note that this occurs even when I switch practice and actual exam versions in different semesters.

Material covered by the exam will pertain to all lecture videos and Coursepack readings through Week 13 (Chapter 13) of the semester. The emphasis will be on Chapters 8-13, with prior chapters being useful to the extend that the latter part of the course builds on these earlier materials.

Work through all problems in the Coursepack, being certain not to view solutions until you have completed your work. This is important. Working through all of the end of chapter problems in the Coursepack will be very useful for preparing for the exam, but only if the problems are used correctly. This might be time-consuming, but the effort should pay off on exam results. Solutions follow the problems in the Coursepack. Spreadsheets offered on the Blackboard site are likely to be useful as well. While not a necessity, I suggest that you wait until you have made most of your preparations for the exam before attempting the practice exam. Allow two hours for each the sample exam.

Updated 08/23/2023