Is it time to Rethink Traditional Exams?
Is it really time to rethink traditional exams and opt for online examination techniques? Well with a rapidly evolving world, everything is about making things easier with technology rather than sticking to tradition. With so many walks of life and sectors being influenced by technology, one of the most affected is the education sector. While allowing technology to take over our lives in some aspects like calculating your loan interests or managing your daily expenses may feel like a safe and hassle-free way to reduce stress.
But is it really time to replace traditional exams with easier exams with technology integrated into them. This is a widely-debated topic, in which both sides have reasonable explanations. However for me, I strongly believe we must stick to traditional exams for now. Heer are some of the reasons why I think so.
Well first of all. Let’s face the facts. By having online exams or even project-based assessments for students to do, what guarantee does the teacher have that there was no cheating involved? Cheating is an unethical technique employed by students to get off the hook with a good grade in their examination with the help of chits and copying techniques. There is no limitation to how much creative children can get in these matters. But cheating also has the ability to ruin a child’s life. As they say “Nothing worthwhile comes easy”, cheating can become a habit that can ruin a young life.
But that’s not it! Exams just have a way to keep a student straight. Be it their perseverance, time management skills or responsibility, traditional exams can embed these vital characteristics into students in just a one-hour long examination. And to replace the helpful traditional exams with other easier techniques is what I would call “Asking for trouble” because with technology and AI shaping our life, children would just get carried away with the perks of the modern world and never learn the key values of perseverance and time management which plays a crucial role in adult life.
But of course, like every coin has two sides, so does this argument. Parents may be coerced to accept easier examination techniques with the belief that the exams will take stress off from students. While sadly exam fear has played a devastating role in harming a child’s mental health. Suicides among children and young adults peak at the beginning of exam season, it has emerged, adding to fears that pressure to get good results is harming their mental health. However, I ask myself, making an exam easier may seem like the right answer to this but in the long term, however this erases the human ability to cope with pressure something that has been a gamechanger for earlier humans.
This argument can go on both sides for a long time. But replacing traditional methods is definetly not the right answer in the long run. While certain improvisations can be made in this method to cater to the evolving needs of students, entirely cutting them out can erase valuable human characteristics that just cannot be taught in a project, in a device or in a classroom for that matter! So why change something that has been working just for comfort that will ultimately come back to haunt us? Hence I feel traditional exams have a long way to go, due to their effectiveness and their ability to foster crucial human elements.
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Cover Image Credits: https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/course-design-ideas/variations-to-traditional-multiple-choice-testing/
Inside Image Credits: https://www.edtechinnovationhub.com/news/savemyexams-study-reveals-85-of-uk-students-suffer-from-exam-anxiety
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