Exams do not encourage long-term learning, and an overreliance on them detracts from the overall learning process.
There are many established methods for assessing students’ progress. While the word “assessment” might immediately lead some to think of traditional quizzes, tests and exams, assessment can and should be integrated throughout the entire learning process.
Assessment is usually divided into three sections: assessment for learning, assessment as learning and assessment of learning. While the first two categories are primarily dedicated to integrating assessment throughout the learning experience, traditional exams are an example of the final category: assessment of learning.
Assessment for learning, also called “formative assessment,” uses students’ knowledge of a given topic to influence subsequent instruction. Assessment as learning allows students the opportunity to assess themselves and discover their own strengths and areas for improvement.
An overreliance on exams detracts from the other types of evaluation that make it possible for a student to experience integrated assessment. By focusing too heavily on the assessment of learning, the learning process becomes less student-centric, instead focusing on a teacher’s pre-created evaluations.
Yet, even within the confines of an assessment of learning, exams are often a boring and scary form of evaluation. An upcoming exam often feels like a threat. It’s a looming evaluation in which a student is expected to sit quietly and fill out a series of predetermined questions before the clock tells them it’s time to submit their papers.
Expecting each student to write an upcoming exam also breaks away from the concept of differentiated learning. As the famous concept of learning styles reveals, not all students learn in the same way, and it’s unfair to expect each student to express their learning in the exact same way when this approach puts some students at an inherent mental disadvantage.
It’s time for educators to use the three types of assessment more creatively to find alternative methods of evaluation. Not only could such an approach improve students’ abilities to reflect upon their learning, but it might also make the evaluation process more fun and fruitful for students.
Another issue with exams lies in their lack of long-term learning. It’s not uncommon for students to cram for an exam only to forget everything they just learned as soon as the test is over. The problem is that exams don’t encourage students to remember the material they’ve learned. An exam can be thought of as a learning checkpoint; once it is completed, there is no need to return to any of the material that came before it.
But is this what education is really about? Should we really be training students to remember a unit’s worth of information only to forget everything as soon as the unit is over?
I barely remember anything from the multitude of math classes I took throughout high school. When a concept appears in a university course that I learned about in high school, it is familiar, but ultimately I must re-learn the same material so I can apply it a second time. I might have completely understood a concept in high school, but after years of not needing to remember the material, it all but disappeared from my mind.
There’s value behind the commonly asked student question, “when am I ever going to use this in real life?” It’s a question that many students have found themselves wondering as they learn seemingly arbitrary material simply to pass their next exam.
It’s true that students won’t need everything that they ever learn in the real world, but each piece of learning can be given more long-term value by employing techniques such as experiential learning rather than relying on exams. By allowing students to apply their learning in unique and creative ways, we can give them a reason to remember the information they’ve gathered.
Relying on exams is a direct contradiction to this philosophy. You can’t blame students for forgetting everything they learned in a class years after it’s over; you can only blame the education system that encouraged them to forget it.
It’s time to stop relying on exams as a largely weighted form of academic evaluation. The world of education will need to think creatively if it hopes to encourage long-lasting learning through effective evaluation.