The exam season is nearly upon us, with lecturers all over the country wrapping up their courses, planning revision sessions and negotiating their marking loads! It’s a tough time for students and teachers alike, and it made me stop and think: are formal exams really the best way of testing student learning?

Over the last few weeks of term I was increasingly aware that even the most enthusiastic student was no longer interested in learning for its own sake, but only wanted me to tell them what they needed to know to pass their exams. In my subject (history) formal exams with students answering several essay type questions without their books or notes are pretty standard, although I was surprised to find at my new institution that ‘seen’ exams (where students saw the paper in advance and could prepare accordingly) were pretty common until only a few years ago. I believe that ‘seen’ exams are inappropriate for university-level education, but are ‘unseen’ formal exams a better way of testing student knowledge?

They are certainly a challenge for any student who suffers with their nerves and any who finds it hard to order their thoughts under pressure of time. But more generally, is the sort of cramming that goes on for exams encouraging long-term retention of information and skills? And if not, what could the alternative be? I suppose in a fantasy world, we would all have 10 dedicated students on each course and we could give them a personal viva voce examination to test their knowledge, but let’s get back to reality! Some lecturers reject exams completely, preferring to use essays and other practical assessments throughout the year. And certainly the research that goes into an extended essay bears more resemblance to what a historian actually does than an exam.

However, following the lead of Oxbridge, the end of year/end of degree exams are so engrained in our academic culture that I feel, probably irrationally, that if I haven’t tested my students in an exam context that they haven’t fully earned their degree, even that I have cheated them somehow. If you ask students, I bet many of them would happily forego the exam experience, but is this a case of lecturers knowing what is good for students better than they do?! More questions than answers this week, I’m afraid, and if anyone has any examples of good practice from their own work that they’d like to share, please comment on this blog!

Students demanding online learning resources: almost all of them
Lecturers looking slightly panicked by this: many!

I am amending old courses and designing new courses ready for 2008-9 at the moment. Academics certainly have to plan ahead, working sometimes 6 months, even up to a year in advance. However, I decided to take notice of the feedback I was getting from this year’s student cohort and am trying to bring my courses into the 21st century by using online resources: easier said that done as you can imagine!

Many lecturers are resistant to using WebCT and other online/electronic resources while others embrace it whole-heartedly. I can see why people might be wary: it takes a lot of work to get your courses enabled on these technologies, only to find that in a year or two the institution has changed its software package, or that students are learning in a different way, leaving you having invested weeks into a now defunct technology. At the other end of the scale, the enthusiasts are using electronic learning environments to replace face to face contact. One course in our department is run on a lecture-only basis with small group seminars replaced by online tutorials and discussion fora. The technology also opens up access to universities to those who would not necessarily have come previously making online degrees the latest buzz word on the lips of many heads of department.

But I am starting small, no grand desires to conquer the electronic world! I am simply opening up another avenue of learning to my students. Digitising chapters from key textbooks is a great way of ensuring all students on a large course can have access to the text. It helps cash-starved librarians too; they no longer have to keep buying multiple copies of the same book to try to keep up with students demand. The downside is that copyright rules restrict the amount of text that can be digitised in this way, but it’s a start. I am also hoping to introduce formative assessments that students can work through in order to develop web evaluation skills: so they know for themselves why wikipedia should not be cited in essays rather than having to be told by their lecturers!

Well, this is the end of the second teaching term in my new job and I suppose it’s a good time to take stock of how I have been getting on and how I have developed my career over the last six months or so. The first thing to say, which I am sure all teachers and lecturers sympathise with but few others do, is how knackered I am! It’s not a contradiction that I love my job and yet still am looking forward to a little rest over the holiday.

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