Should written exams be replaced with other forms of assessment? [ENDS 18/04/2010]

Should written exams be abolished and replaced with other forms of assessment?

ENDS 18/04/2010

For many, the experience of writing examinations at the end of a school year or a specific course such as GCSE or A levels can be quite an emotion drenching and stressful affair.

Recently there has been new evidence that has suggested that the written form of examinations is not the way forward. Arguments that have been put forward include the fact that assessment forms such as coursework are better than examinations, in the sense that they take into account the research and understanding of a specific subject. Others argue that exams help apply knowledge into a specific subject area. Some curriculums have already been tailor made to be based fully on coursework, such as the BTEC curriculum.

Hence, the question up for debate is whether written examinations should indeed be abolished and replaced with other forms of assessment, such as that of coursework?

It would be naive to say exams should be abolished since there is no viable alternative. To a certain extent coursework can often measure how long a student has spent on a piece of work opposed to whether they are good at that subject or not. Equally coursework is much more open to assisted help from friends, teachers or even the internet so it becomes less about the students work and more about who they know. The only way to do coursework fairly would be to do it in class, in silence and in timed conditions which is an exam is it not?

I don't think they should.

Coursework is fine, it does help a student who is perhaps not so good at exams or suffers from intense nerves within them. However, I don't think that coursework is always a true representation of a persons knowledge on a topic. It is easy to produce a piece of coursework that does not necessarily come from the person whose name is on it and often comes from work that has been regurgitated from sources online or from older siblings/friends. Plus, it is extremely hard to police how much a teacher helps the student with it. For that reason, it is quite unfair also. An example would be that in one class, the teacher may be very happy to help a student improve their work, and will help them with a lot of knowledge input. However, in another class the teacher may be strictly sticking to the rules and refuse to help. That provides an inconsistency and therefore how well you do could depend on the luck of the draw.

I accept that exams are very stressful, i've been through them myself, at GCSE and at A-Level and it's not easy when you fail one to pick yourself up and try again. However, I think that exams teach a good lesson, a valuable lesson. Nothing is earnt without hard work, and you certainly do need to give a lot of input to an A-Level exam to even pass it. Exams do often differ in difficulty between years, so again it is a matter of luck as to which paper you recieve, and largely which examiner you get to mark the paper. It can be said that passing or failing an exam is no indication of how good at a subject you are, perhaps you are just good at storing the information for a short enough period of time to pass the exam, and then forget it all. Or alternatively, it's also possible to know the content and still fail the exam because you haven't answered the question in the required way.

In the end, i've suffered no lasting damage from failing an exam, you must simply get back up and try again, eventually you will pass if you have the correct desire to. I think exams should stay.

Hard to say :/ I prefer coursework because you have to put alot of thought into it and at the end you come out learning waaaay too much about the topic, while with essays it just relies on how well your short term book cramming memory is :/ Referencing in assessments and constructing a reasoned argument in a few thousand words seems far more stress free and worthwhile at the end, and it means you have to put alot of effort into them. You can also put all the information relevant at the time in place, while with essays you can't re-structure or add anything important in once you've written a huge chunk.

Can't say I'd worry if essays went, but at the same time they do have their purpose.

I do not think they should be completely abolished altough I do think assessment work would be a great benefit because it would take piles of stress from studying off a student. In Ireland we don't have very much coursework. We only have it for twoor three subjects which is fine because it already hands you a percentage of our total mark before going into te exam. For that reason assessment should be brought into the education system.

No because anybody could get into uni. There are far too many applications thanks to labours strategy of getting the working class into uni.

Exams, however accurate they maybe, I think is the wrong solution for achieving those much needed A-levels/GCSE's.
Coursework should have a much bigger overall effect on the final grade for the chosen subject, although the controversy of whether it be the student's own work or simply taken from the internet via copy and paste. Observed coursework I think is the way forward. Where you do coursework completely under the eyes of a teacher/examiner - over the time of a few weeks, or however long the teacher for that subject gives you as deadlines. You might say this is just an easy way for students to achieve high grades, but what if for each piece of coursework, you have to complete two pieces, one using any resources wanted, and another with no resources (Cept ya head ;))

That's a very good point. In Ireland it's actually the rules where all coursework must be completed during class time and they have to list their sources so the examiner can make sure they just don't go onto the internet and copy and past everyword. Most schools actually their coursework in handwriting for the reason on copy and paste.

I don't get all this fear of students copying other peoples work and other plagiarism fears :S Universities let do with alot of coursework and essays, so it won't make much difference if schools and colleges drop essays, seeing as universities rely on coursework for the majority of the courses.

I think there is possibility of oral presentations. I, personally, am not a very confident speaker, much preferring to write but there are people who are the opposite and as far as I've been told, you're expected to do oral presentations at university so it could be a good way to boost confidence with shy speakers and give the not-so-good writers a chance to shine.

However, written exams should still continue because I prefer having a 2 hour exam rather than a month coursework. I just lose interest too soon and so my marks tend to decrease nearer the end... :P