February 27th, 2009
Exams - a valid method of assessment?
As a life sciences student at the University of Manchester the way I was assessed in almost all modules I studied was through exams, and only exams. Yesterday, in my capacity as Academic Affairs Officer, I had the opportunity to talk to course representatives from life sciences and one of the topics we spent a fair amount of time on was whether exams are really the right way to test someone’s understanding of the subject matter, and if not, how they as representatives could go about changing the assessment system so they do test understanding.
I’ve already got strong opinions on the issue, so I sat back and enjoyed the discussion, occasionally clarifying some facts or asking some questions. It was significant that no one was that in favour of exams, other than in recognition that other methods of assessment take longer to mark and staff time is limited.
The two preferred methods suggested (though there were others) were more coursework essays spread throughout the semester, and more assessed group work or presentations. Someone made the point that in most careers, when people are asked to research a topic they are unlikely to spend crazy hours close to the deadline frantically cramming and then write a report in two hours without reference to the subject. Others talked about how, upon reflection the day after an exam, they’d already forgotten a fair amount of what they had just revised.
I’d be interested to hear what other students think about exams as a method of assessment. Do they work? What are they for? How would you prefer to be tested on your understanding of a subject?
Chris, I write here as a university lecturer of 20 years experience, and in fact as current chair of my university department’s Exam Board.
I would like to defend exams on the grounds that they’re the only way we can be sure what we’re assessing is truly the students’ work. I’m sorry, but my experience is that with almost any form of assessed coursework done in the students’ own time, you just get the results of mass plagiarism and what the students call “working together” and I call “getting your bright friend to do all the work”. Time after time after time I’ve seen students hand in assessed courseworks which are near perfect, only to be absolutely hopeless when asked to do the same thing in an exam. I mean by this making mistakes which no-one who had actually done the work they claim to have done would possibly make, because doing the work in practice means these things become second nature to you.
You seem to be working to the assumption that exams are memory tests. This is an assumption I have to fight and fight and fight against with my students because in my experience the belief that “learning==memorisation” is the most pernicious barrier to true learning that exists. How many times do I tell my students “No, you have to work steadily in this throughout the term to develop a deep understanding of it, and you’ll only develop that deep understanding by solving the problems set which use it”? And how many of them still take this attitude that the way to pass exams is to “frantically cram” just before the exam day. Chris, no, NO, NO!!!, NO!!!!!!!!!!! Please, if this is what you believe, you are wrong, and if this is what you advise in your role as Academic Affairs Officer in your Student Union, you are unsuited to that role. Every year I see so many students fail because they’ve taken that approach. In pathological cases, they’ve actually sat down and memorised vast chunks of notes and examples I’ve given to illustrate some principle, rather than done the much simpler task of understanding that principle. Then they just reproduce that stuff from their memory in response to some trigger word in the exam paper, and they fail! They fail because what they wrote is irrelevant to the problem set and because memorising without understanding just doesn’t give you the capacity to answer questions which are about understanding. The best students, those who do well in exams, are always those who worked patiently through the material in term-time and developed the understanding of it that my exams test. Chris, how can I get my students to understand this and pass my exams when people like you keep telling them it’s all about last minute cramming?
A good exam is not about memorising, but about testing understanding through problem solving using the principles taught. If you really have grasped those principles, then when asked to sit down and use them, you can do so. Part of the problem is that both students and staff can be lazy, and it’s very easy to collaborate in this laziness by exams which are memory tests. Students like them because they’re not asking them to do any deep thinking, lazy academics like them because they’re easy to set and easy to mark and easy to teach to, and give the academic plenty of time to go off and write research papers which is the only thing the government cares that academics do (or at least, they’ve set the university funding system so that in effect it works that way).
But also, we now have Sats and GCSEs and the like which seem to be over-based on memory testing. We even have in the news recently some idiotic headmaster who claims to have had a major breakthrough in learning by introducing short-term memorising techniques:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2009/feb/13/spaced-learning-blog
All this tells you is the USELESSNESS of the exams in question. Believe me, I write this from experience and despair at the way the British school education system is going.
whilst i do agree with the above post to some extent i also see where chris is coming from.
exams are great in the sense that it reflects the ability of each students at that given time, the time that the exam is taking place, the questions, the conditions are all the same. so you prepare and 99% of the time the mark you get is the mark you deserve. and it feels great to learn that you got better marks than the next person but hold up your hat to the next person who scored higher than you. but in some modules especially in life sciences, last minute cramming do work, to a high extent. granted that you can not do magnificent if you have not understood anything during term-time but experiences i have seen that minimum work during term and cramming 6 days before an exam can still get you that First.
and as for forgetting information the day after the exam, it is true also, especially when names of proteins or transcription factors are concerned. there are a lot of names to remember and most of the just a combi of letters or/and numbers, you do not need to carry those names all the time with you so you forget them as soon as it ceases to be useful.
however i do not 100% promote assessed work during term time in students’ “own time” because as outlined before, most undergraduate students go through a high degree of collusion going on, which annoys the hell out of me cz some people actually take assessed coursework seriously and want to deserve the mark that they get. if there were a way to anonymously tip of collusion cases the university would be surprised.
in my opinion there should be a healthy mixture of both exams at finals and some assessed work during term time, for at the moment the majority of it is weighted upon the final exams. more weight should be distributed throughout the course but not necessarily via assessed written work completed at students’ own time, instead a more interactive method of assessment should be included e.g by having to give individual presentations or group presentations to asses teamwork, as well as subject knowledge, or perhaps on the spot discussions/debate. i understand that this is not made possible probably due to there being no time to asses everyone by listening to their presentations but i feel more universities and lecturers should make and give students the time, instead of making us feel sometimes that we are just a number to increase their impressive statistics of ‘percentage of students in year X achieving a First and upper second’!