Should we stop using exams for assessment permanently?

[Bletchleyite]

Thought this worthy of a thread in its own right away from the COVID19 context.

As I posted there:

I'd say it should be enough that there is some sort of appeals process. Exams are a terrible way of assessing someone anyway, and I say that as someone with good exam technique who can pass an exam on something he barely knows anything about.

The useful skill in the 21st century is research and critical thinking. Remembering facts by rote is pointless when you've got every fact you could ever want on a device in your pocket. Exams shouldn't come back now they've gone, in my view.

Thoughts?

 

[edwin_m]

I'm inclined to agree, though there is always the risk with assessment on coursework of how much help the child may have had. Perhaps coursework for qualifications should be done on the school premises and not allowed to be removed?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm inclined to agree, though there is always the risk with assessment on coursework of how much help the child may have had. Perhaps coursework for qualifications should be done on the school premises and not allowed to be removed?

That's one option. Another one is that you don't have specific assessable items, but instead you assess performance throughout the course.

 

[deltic]

Thought this worthy of a thread in its own right away from the COVID19 context.

As I posted there:

I'd say it should be enough that there is some sort of appeals process. Exams are a terrible way of assessing someone anyway, and I say that as someone with good exam technique who can pass an exam on something he barely knows anything about.

The useful skill in the 21st century is research and critical thinking. Remembering facts by rote is pointless when you've got every fact you could ever want on a device in your pocket. Exams shouldn't come back now they've gone, in my view.

Thoughts?

I have always felt open book exams are the way forward - so no need to remember anything but you need to understand how to apply what you have learnt in different situations. The problem with course work is that children with supportive parents/teachers are going to do a lot better than those that havent.

 

[dosxuk]

Most exams I took were primarily about demonstrating that I could apply the rules I'd been taught, not that I could remember specific pieces of information. You don't get marks for knowing the specific fact that 1234 + 5678 = 6912, you get marks for knowing how to add any arbitrary numbers together.

Yeah, some questions on papers were about specific information you could recite, but often that information was then used in subsequent questions to demonstrate how to apply that fact.

 

[ainsworth74]

I have always felt open book exams are the way forward - so no need to remember anything but you need to understand how to apply what you have learnt in different situations.

Yes I've thought that for a while. I think exams have value as a way of testing someone in a controlled setting on their ability to apply concepts that they've learned to a problem. But closed book exams are an awful way of doing that as they rely on your ability to memorise information which isn't necessarily everyone's strong suite and, personally, I think, fairly irrelevant when it comes to preparing for the wider world. I can't really think of any situation in my working life so far where I've not been able to look things up as I need them rather than having to memorise them (and indeed usually that's been encouraged!).

So I think open book exams are the way to go in a great many cases. Personally I'd suggest that the exam papers comes with an information booklet (again controlling the level of information available so you can't just Google the exact question on the paper or write your own book of answers or bring in a textbook with all the answers) to be used during the exam. I think there's space for coursework and teacher assessment as well but of course teacher assessment is of course very subjective (either in favour or against a student!!) and coursework is open to abuse with a lot of additional parental support.

But certainly I don't think closed book exams are a very effective judge of ability other than the ability of someone to memorise information.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So I think open book exams are the way to go in a great many cases. Personally I'd suggest that the exam papers comes with an information booklet

A lot of them do, e.g. my A-level Physics came with a formula booklet.

I don't think Googling the answer is necessarily a bad thing in the sense that you wouldn't be Googling the answer but rather a comparable means of finding it which you then have to adapt to your needs. I've often said the IT industry is basically set up around the skilled use of a Google search!

 

[scotrail158713]

A lot of them do, e.g. my A-level Physics came with a formula booklet.

Same up here with any science exams.
Maths also had one as well although it was a bit useless as it only gave you half the formulae you needed, and you had to remember the other half.

 

[cactustwirly]

A lot of them do, e.g. my A-level Physics came with a formula booklet.

I don't think Googling the answer is necessarily a bad thing in the sense that you wouldn't be Googling the answer but rather a comparable means of finding it which you then have to adapt to your needs. I've often said the IT industry is basically set up around the skilled use of a Google search!

Google is full of crap that you can't trust as well, normal Google searching comes up with a lot of dodgy journals, so we use trusted sites such as Science Direct etc

 

[cactustwirly]

Thought this worthy of a thread in its own right away from the COVID19 context.

As I posted there:

I'd say it should be enough that there is some sort of appeals process. Exams are a terrible way of assessing someone anyway, and I say that as someone with good exam technique who can pass an exam on something he barely knows anything about.

The useful skill in the 21st century is research and critical thinking. Remembering facts by rote is pointless when you've got every fact you could ever want on a device in your pocket. Exams shouldn't come back now they've gone, in my view.

Thoughts?

No exams are a fair way of assessing knowledge and understanding.
Good exam technique can help, but not if you don't know the content.

I think coursework is unfair, and is actually harder than exams.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

But certainly I don't think closed book exams are a very effective judge of ability other than the ability of someone to memorise information.

I don't think that's entirely true - it's certainly possible to set exam questions that require you to think critically, and my memory of A levels is that many questions did exactly that.

But I'd also question the assumption that lots of people have that testing the memorising of information is a bad thing. Even with Google, lots of jobs require memorising of quite a bit of information, and most academic subjects are also impossible to understand without memorising a reasonable amount. At one extreme, you couldn't speak a foreign language without knowing a lot of vocabularly by heart, along with (in most languages) being able to instantly, off the top of your head, recall plurals of nouns and different tenses of verbs etc. In history, would you really be able to get a good grasp of history without knowing by heart at least the approximate sequence and history of many events? And even in something like maths, you're not going to get far very quickly if you have to Google stuff like Pythagoras' theorem or what a square root means every time you need it. So I really don't see a problem with exams assuming that you have somehow memorised stuff like that.

 

[Domh245]

I agree, closed book exams are unrepresentative of the real world and in effect just promote memorising facts which is not a particularly useful skill. Of course, not all exams are cases where you have to regurgitate information, but for my last set of in-person exams in January, by going through past papers I was able to establish most types of question that would come up and they'd either be stating facts that you've committed to memory or 'crank the handle' type answers where you memorise a process but change the values that you put in.

Interestingly, one of my modules currently had recognised this problem and whilst we were going to still have a 'closed book' exam on it (albeit with supplementary information such as thermodynamic constants and energy densities), the convener was trying to make it more 'real-world representative' by having more open ended questions that required more analytical thinking using the information given rather than remembering a calculation we'd learnt in lecture 4.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

No exams are a fair way of assessing knowledge and understanding.
Good exam technique can help, but not if you don't know the content.

I think coursework is unfair, and is actually harder than exams.

I agree to some extent.

The huge benefit of exams is that they assess how much understanding you have, when you're in an environment in which you can't get help/be provided with the answers by anyone else. And that's the fundamental problem with coursework - it's very hard to tell with coursework the extent to which a person has provided good answers because they had lots of help from their friends/family. Also, the time-limited nature provides a good guide to a person's ability to work and produce answers quickly.

The disadvantage of exams is that they are stressful, and that works to the disadvantage of people who are particularly susceptible to that kind of stress. Also, by their nature, it's impossible in a closed-book exam to assess how well someone can deal with an extended project. And, to the extent that they require answers to be written with pen and paper, they may disadvantage people who have the understanding but find it easier to communicate by speaking or on a computer. For those reasons, I can see the importance of having assessed coursework complement exams. In the end though, we also have to recognise that there probably isn't a perfect solution that can assess everyone fairly, and any system is going to have to be some kind of compromise based on what works reasonably well.

 

[Meerkat]

If you are getting rid of exams because you should be tested on your thinking skills then why do we bother doing different subjects?
Having a memorised background subject knowledge is very important in subjects such as science.
Also the ability to memorise things such as procedures is important in many jobs - how do you train someone who doesn’t have that skill?
My concern about continuous assessment is that it massively favours richer kids

 

[Domh245]

But I'd also question the assumption that lots of people have that testing the memorising of information is a bad thing. Even with Google, lots of jobs require memorising of quite a bit of information, and most academic subjects are also impossible to understand without memorising a reasonable amount. At one extreme, you couldn't speak a foreign language without knowing a lot of vocabularly by heart, along with (in most languages) being able to instantly, off the top of your head, recall plurals of nouns and different tenses of verbs etc. In history, would you really be able to get a good grasp of history without knowing by heart at least the approximate sequence and history of many events? And even in something like maths, you're not going to get far very quickly if you have to Google stuff like Pythagoras' theorem or what a square root means every time you need it. So I really don't see a problem with exams assuming that you have somehow memorised stuff like that.

There's basic information and theories that you'd expect to be remembered (such as Pythagoras and what a square root is), but then there are also things that you remember for exams that really aren't suited for just 'being remembered'. That doesn't even necessarily rule out having to learn and memorise things though, even with Google's assistance you often need a basic understanding/memory of a concept to be able to use it

 

[Meerkat]

The disadvantage of exams is that they are stressful, and that works to the disadvantage of people who are particularly susceptible to that kind of stress.

Whilst this is true the ability to deal with that kind of stress is a relevant ‘qualification’ for some employers. Would you want a doctor who folded under the stress of needing to very quickly remember how to treat you?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Google is full of crap that you can't trust as well, normal Google searching comes up with a lot of dodgy journals, so we use trusted sites such as Science Direct etc

Which was precisely my point. The skillset needed in the 21st century, even from a very, very early age, is research and critical thinking - that is, how to weed out the rubbish from the facts.

Learning by rote, other than basic skills of literacy and numeracy, really isn't an appropriate or useful modern day skill.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Whilst this is true the ability to deal with that kind of stress is a relevant ‘qualification’ for some employers. Would you want a doctor who folded under the stress of needing to very quickly remember how to treat you?

No, but it would assess that better by dealing with a medical simulation in their medical degree than 3 hours of advanced mathematics A level.

For those not in that kind of job, deadlines in the real world are much more like coursework deadlines.

 

[najaB]

Exams are a terrible way of assessing someone anyway, and I say that as someone with good exam technique who can pass an exam on something he barely knows anything about.

That is a flaw in how exams are set. I guarantee you that in order to pass any of the exams I set (I used to lecture Computer Science at university, and assisted with setting exams for secondary-school level) you needed to know the subject.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That is a flaw in how exams are set. I guarantee you that in order to pass any of the exams I set (I used to lecture Computer Science at university, and assisted with setting exams for secondary-school level) you needed to know the subject.

That's a fair point, though Computer Science is an excellent case in point - who ever sits in a darkened room and writes code with a pen without access to any documentation? It's about the least suitable subject for traditional examinations I can imagine.

 

[najaB]

That's a fair point, though Computer Science is an excellent case in point - who ever sits in a darkened room and writes code with a pen without access to any documentation? It's about the least suitable subject for traditional examinations I can imagine.

Which is why I never set exams that required coding. The most I ever asked for was an algorithm or flow diagram. Coding skill was tested by project work.

You could have had an open book, and still not passed if you didn't understand the concepts.

 

[najaB]

Too often I have seen exams that have been set so that they are easy to mark.

A good exam can really be useful at sorting out those who know from those who pretend to know. As an example, the most brutal exam I ever took was A-Level biology. One question in particular sticks in my mind over 20 years later, nine words that struck terror into anyone who hadn't been paying attention all year: "The cell is the basic unit of life. Discuss. (25 marks)" - out of 75 marks if memory serves correctly.

 

[cactustwirly]

Which was precisely my point. The skillset needed in the 21st century, even from a very, very early age, is research and critical thinking - that is, how to weed out the rubbish from the facts.

Learning by rote, other than basic skills of literacy and numeracy, really isn't an appropriate or useful modern day skill.

How do you know that isn't taught.
You need to understand the topic in order to research effectively, that is what the exams assess, knowledge and understanding

 

[John Webb]

My biggest grumble about exams was that they were/are held in May/June - at the peak of the hay-fever season! I suffered badly from hay-fever in my teens and am sure this affected the results I got in both school and external exams. I also wasn't good at memorising things, and thought at the time (early to mid-1960s for 'O' and 'A' levels) more use should have been made of course-work, as indeed the university course in physics I went on to do did.
(No internet then to 'google' things on..... at home or work!)

 

[Bletchleyite]

How do you know that isn't taught.

Erm, from having been to school (and from talking to people I know who have kids now)? It is nowhere near as well-taught as it should be.

 

[Meerkat]

For those not in that kind of job, deadlines in the real world are much more like coursework deadlines.

I would have thought most skilled jobs required a lot of memorised training. The stuff you google/refer to manuals is around the fringes.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

The problem with course work is that children with supportive parents/teachers are going to do a lot better than those that haven't.

Which is discriminatory and why I am against it as the SOLE means of assessment. It should be part of the final grade.

You need to understand the topic in order to research effectively, that is what the exams assess, knowledge and understanding

I agree.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

I agree to some extent.

The huge benefit of exams is that they assess how much understanding you have, when you're in an environment in which you can't get help/be provided with the answers by anyone else. And that's the fundamental problem with coursework - it's very hard to tell with coursework the extent to which a person has provided good answers because they had lots of help from their friends/family. Also, the time-limited nature provides a good guide to a person's ability to work and produce answers quickly.

The disadvantage of exams is that they are stressful, and that works to the disadvantage of people who are particularly susceptible to that kind of stress. Also, by their nature, it's impossible in a closed-book exam to assess how well someone can deal with an extended project. And, to the extent that they require answers to be written with pen and paper, they may disadvantage people who have the understanding but find it easier to communicate by speaking or on a computer. For those reasons, I can see the importance of having assessed coursework complement exams. In the end though, we also have to recognise that there probably isn't a perfect solution that can assess everyone fairly, and any system is going to have to be some kind of compromise based on what works reasonably well.

Or to put another way:
The benefit of exams is that they are stressful - which is what happens in real life.
The disadvantage of exams is they are stressful.

I do agree there is probably not a perfect solution. On balance I prefer a mix of coursework, oral presentation and exams - both open and closed book. Of course oral presentation gives an advantage to people who love public speaking.

 

[hexagon789]

No exams are a fair way of assessing knowledge and understanding.
Good exam technique can help, but not if you don't know the content.

I think coursework is unfair, and is actually harder than exams.

I disagree, personally I found that for the exams at least much was based on ones ability to remember particular facts or information rather than the practical application of such things.

Not everyone does well in exams simply because they don't revise and I feel that taking coursework into account reflects better on individuals performance as you can see how they do throughout the school year as a whole and through the subject as a whole rather than within a few hours on a specific day on specific elements of a subject.

I feel coursework gives a fuller picture, exams a more limited one of people's abilities.

I'm not saying exams should be scrapped outright but at least coursework should be taken more into account in awarding grades, it's shouldn't be entirely based on examinations.

 

[najaB]

I disagree, personally I found that for the exams at least much was based on ones ability to remember particular facts or information rather than the practical application of such things.

Again, that entirely comes down to how the exams are set. Too many are set so that they will be be easy to mark.