This petition addresses the concerns some students in the Bio207 class for the summer 2020 session, had for the TT2 short answer question format. It was required of us to answer 4 short answer questions worth a significant 130 marks out of 360 in the second midterm only on 2 pages. The answer sheet included diagrams, drawings, tables and text. 

The basis and arguments brought forth by the students as to why we would like to increase the page limit to 4 is the following:

1. The answers would have easily fit into 2 pages if the test was conducted in person, the formatting of the word document does not allow students to do this without wasting time during the test attempting to adjust the formatting of the answers to fit into 2 pages.

2. Attempting to fit the diagrams, tables, and answers in 2 pages would have come at the cost of organization of the answer. It would be in the best interest of the student and the instructor to have answers that cannot appropriately fit into 2 pages be organized in an appropriate number of pages, which does not compromise how much work the instructor will have to mark and keep things organized for the instructor.

3. Word limits rather than page limits should be used to avoid redundancies on the test answer sheet; since an individual who includes diagrams and answered the questions with over 2000 words can fit their answers in a 2 page format if need be by altering the margins and font size, should not have precedent to another individual with 1000 word answers and stand alone diagrams who double spaced their answers into 3 pages should not be docked marks because they chose to organize their answers for clarity. In fact for the sake of time and organization it would be in the best interest for the instructor to mark the latter individual's paper.

This petition is open to the affected students, as well as students that did not exceed the page limit in the test that resonate with the aforementioned points presented regarding the test format.