Well, it's exam season for me, so I think this topic would be appropriate. Should exams be replaced with other forms of assessment? Schools and unis use end of semester exams as the major form of assessment. No doubt a portion of students do not do as well because of the stress caused by it. Should more attention be put on course work rather than exams? Or are exams good training for life when success depends on your ability to deal with stress and perform on particular occasions?
i don't mind exams. they're a nice way to boost up your grade and i've never thought they were too stressful. in my experience, the people who really get worked up about exams are the ones who've been slacking off all semester and don't know any of the material or the people who didn't start to study until like, the night before.
They sure have lots of advantages for the working people and disavantages for the lazy ones. But in my oppinion, they don't need to be replaced. :yup:
Slacking off then cramming sure can amount to a lot of stress, but exams can have a lot riding on them, which adds a lot of pressure. Exams such as A-level and university placement exams can stress out a lot of students. Surely putting greater emphasis on coursework would amount to the same thing? It's not just your ability to answer the questions in a given time period, it takes into account your understanding of the issues and ability to express yourself. I mean, a lazy person with an excellent memory can get away with doing a large amount of work during the semester.
Exams are a poor, poor way of assessment. In fact, all testing in general is bad. It makes the student stressed and nervous, and the test isn't assessing the student's knowledge, it's assessing what he or she crammed into their head the night before and will forget by a week later. Instead, a better method is to have live debates and activities where students are graded on how well they perform and understand the material.
I think it really depends on your testing style... Some people can do really well in a class and understand the material, but do very poorly on an exam because of anxiety issues. At that point it becomes less of a form of assessment of learning and more of a battle of wits... Sometimes the material on an exam isn't exactly a representation of what was taught throughout the course. Meaning there's more emphasis placed on certain parts and it just depends on what you remember particularly well.
I'm only studying at the A-level of my University course and we don't have one bi exam at the end of each semester. We have the course divided into smaller categories that are about 4 weeks each and they contain minor essays (5-6 pages each) that you do at home. That works fine with me. It's the same for the B-level and I even think it might be for the C-level as you need to make an extra D-level essay/exam in order to get a master's degree. I remember in High School, we didn't have major exams on all we had learned, we had the exams divided into smaller tests. And of course, if you weren't satisfied with your grade you always had a chance to take the test again or do extra home work to raise the grade.
That last bit varies to each high school and teacher over here. Most if not all teachers will not let you retake a test, and very few offer any extra homework. There's extra credit offered sometimes, but it's usually very little and also rare.
Yeah, that doesn't sound like a bad grading system. When I was in my final years of highschool, we had a few things worth a small percentage of marks, but the larger percentage was on the exams. As for university, it also depends on the uni, course and subject. For one of my subjects, if you get 45-49 they'll let you take another exam.If you pass that, you get a 50. For some subjects there are open book exams. So those exams ask you to evaluate information, and I think those are good because they test your ability to apply your knowledge, not just your memory. But not all subjects are appropriate for it.
I haven't had a major exam in four years, as I'm currently in a top college, with through train education till end of pre-university. What we have instead is a series of projects, and plenty of assessments. And the semesterly tests to gauge our standards. However, exams are useful to force the students to study, which is why schools are not replacing them with other forms of assessments I presume.
Even though this is an UBER gravedig...my exam period for the fall just ended and I have a couple things I'd like to say: You obviously haven't gotten to college/university level schooling yet...trust me, exams are not "nice" in any sense of the word. Exams are an awful way to judge a student's overall knowledge on a subject. There are too may confounding variables that can affect the grade. These include the fact that the questions will never comprehensively test all of the material, the fact that they are high pressure situations that can cause students to perform poorly, etc. In my opinion, the best way to grade a student in a course is to do the following: First, weight attendance heavily...sure, this may seem unfair, and you don't have to pay attention if you go to class, but if you give attendance just enough weight to encourage people to go without giving out all As and Bs, then I think that this would help immensely. I know attending class in high school is mandatory, but in college most class lectures are optional, and you really can't learn the material well if you don't attend lecture...but by cramming for a test using the textbook you may be able to do well on an exam without attending lecture. Second, assign homework problem sets after every lecture and make them due the following day. Sure, that's more work for the teacher or the TA or whoever grades the assignments, but it makes sure that the students keep up to date on the material and it should also prevent some of the cheating that goes on (copying assignments) since the students don't have much time to complete them. Lastly, exams aren't all bad, so several tests should be administered throughout the semester, but they each should have as much weight as maybe one or two homework assignments. This way, students aren't too stressed out about them, and as long as they stay on top of their homework they will do fine in the course. Sorry about the length of the post, I'd like to hear what people think of my ideas.
Exams are a terrible way assess the knowledge that the student has gained through a certain course. I just can't think of a better way to assess them without causing stress. To be quite honest, anything you do that will affect a students progression can become stressful, whether it be through exams, projects, papers or whathaveyou. The best way to keep school stress free is to let the children learn at their own pace. Haha, but then the question would be WOULD the children learn anything at all... But seriously, the material taught should be structured for long term retention. I think the least stressful way to do this is repetition. In response to your opinion Ice Nine, I think that your ideas are valid but I do not think that the overnight problem sets will prevent cheating. If you wish for the students to keep up to date on the reading and such, I would suggest weekly quizzes or something along those lines.
I've always thought that exams shouldn't have a time limit I don't understand why being able to write really quickly everything you've learnt over a year in 3 hours gets you a grade. With a time limit exams only test how good at exams you are rather than your knowledge of the subject. I take 3 written subjects and if I basically list points with a few grammar words in between to make it seem like an essay I get more marks than if I put together a well constructed essay. If I didn't have a time limit I could put all the points of a list essay into a well written essay. I do think coursework is a good idea in my particular subjects I think the balance is pretty good it's about 20% - 40% coursework.
I think exams are the only way professors can test their students without giving themselves very large amounts of work. Yes, it would be better to hand out a lot quizzes and tests over the course of the semester, but that would be very hard on the professor, considering they have to grade hundreds of them.
Agreed, but this is why you hire lots of graders and TAs in order to do it for you...Of course, this doesn't apply for high school teachers, but there are much bigger problems with the high school education system than how they test learning.
I agree for the most part. Public high school education is a joke. Plus we are living in different times, and old teaching techniques and course materials are becoming quickly and vastly outdated in our era of information and technology.
My school understands that the single semester test causes many problems, so what they do is weight it only 40% instead of the 60-70% it used to be, so even if you fail the final, you can get full credit for the class. I like that setup a LOT better than the way it used to be (even though I normally do well on the tests) I do, however, wish they wouldnt cram everything into one large test.
Um...40% on a single test is completely outrageous... Even in university, cumulative finals aren't usually over 25-30%...and what I'm suggesting would make tests like 3-5% each 0.o
I just got done with my exams I think last week! I was so glad to have them over with too! I had EMT, Kinesiology, Sociology and Social Psychology and all of them were a pain! Worse part was Kinesiology I'm never too sure how to study for because the book is so sporadic! Plus for my Sociology class instead of telling us which specific chapters are on there and reading he goes from different chapters and expects us to know everything! And then the great news was I had my EMT certification yesterday and basically I've been studying ever since then! I just hate teachers that take their boring sweet time during class and then do these ridiculous tests!
At my college, all finals are worth 40%. It's a double edged sword, I guess, because if you're doing poorly, the exam can really help you, but if you're doing well, the exam can bring you down. Plus, I don't think professors want to grade hundreds of exams multiple times, and that's why they have to give out fewer exams that are worth more.