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!
