I have a question that may be of interest to the students and faculty who read your blog. In searching the archives of your blog, I did not see a blog post on the following:
How do you assess and evaluate those students?
I have a colleague who administers only one assessment - a final. Most of the rest of my department uses a variety of activities, assessments and evaluations - homework sets, reading quizzes, writing, midterm and final.
Here is the weighting we use to grade each semester in ec 10 at Harvard: 40 percent on the final exam, 20 percent on each of two midterm exams, and 20 percent on work done with section leader (mostly grades on problem sets done as homework, though class participation may be given some weight as well). In addition, we have an optional "unit test program" in which students can take practice tests throughout the semester and, if they pass, earn extra credit.