It all starts at the tender age of 5 or 6 years when a student/kid enters in the classroom for grade 1. After that, there is a span of 15-16 years which the student undergoes with the same monotonous life of class tests, unit tests, yearly examinations and also other than this … projects, homework presentations add only the anxiety and boredom to his/her life.
You must be thinking what rubbish I am writing here… This system has produced the great students who become doctors, Engineers, Lawyers, Reporters or even Politicians. Then what makes me think to raise a question over this ongoing process. Actually what we are watching is only the positive part of this system. We always make records for the successful students of every school, college, university, but have we ever taken any records into consideration for the students who are not so successful after their studies.
For example out of a class of 50, On an average only 5-6 students manage to be above 90%, 10-15 manage to between 80-90%, around 15 in between 70-80% and around 20 are below 65%. This percentage goes on decreasing once these students cross the board examinations. You can always find little more addition to the lower percentage groups. Are all these students that bad or all the high scorers are great enough to do everything better than the Low scorers.
Actually as per my understanding, the answer is certainly NO. What I feel is, these examinations are not the true evaluation of a student’s knowledge. We all know now days actually how difficult it remains to clear any examination… Apart from some good entrance exams; anybody can clear any exam of university level or school level with only 4-5 days of preparation. This means that these examinations are not helpful in terms of knowledge. Securing good marks is the only way which has remained to be achieved, not the knowledge. You can go through the whole material a week before the exams, mug up the contents and can easily secure the higher ranks. But you cannot acquire the true concepts and knowledge for which that subject has been introduced in to particular stream. There is no interest left in students to go in to deep research about the subjects, to explore the subject specified to them. For example an Electrical Engineering student knows that he doesn’t require being great with the heavy machines concepts as he can easily get the job in IT with good marks. So what he does is do short term courses for Electrical content , clears the exams and got selected into IT field through campus selection. So what all he requires from his or her degree is just good marks not the Knowledge.
In the end few Questions arises are
How can we generate the Interest in the students for their respective fields?
And
Can low scorers be benefited more with any other examination system?
To be continued……….
Do you have any solutions………….Please provide your views.
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1 comment:
Sachin:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree completely. I attended an event called Hacking Education where a number of these issues regarding education (including assessments and value of tests) were discussed. The consensus was that the time is ripe to make some major revolutionary changes to the way we educate and assess. Here are some more details and takeaways from the event. In particular look at #9 about the adaptive assessment tests. Read this link below there are plenty of good ideas in this.
http://publicusv.wiki.zoho.com/HackingEducationReading.html
1) The student (and his/her parents) is increasingly going to take control of his/her education including choice of schools, teachers, classes, and even curriculum. That's what the web does. It transfers control from institutions to individuals and its going to do that to education too.
2) Alternative forms of education (home schooling, charter schools, online learning, adult education/lifelong learning) are on the rise and we are just at the start of that trend.
3) Students will increasingly find themselves teaching as well. Peer production will move from just producing content to producing learning as well.
4) Look for technologies and approaches that reduce the marginal cost of an incremental student. Imagine that it will go to zero at some point and get on that curve.
5) The education system we currently have was built to train the industrial worker. As we move to an information driven society it is high time to question everything about the process by which we educate our society. That process and the systems that underlie it will look very different by the time our children's children are in school.
6) Investment opportunities that work around our current institutions will be more attractive but we cannot ignore disruptive approaches that will work inside the existing system. Open courseware, lesson sharing, social networks, and lightweight/public publishing tools are examples of disruptive approaches that will work inside the existing system.
7) Teachers are more important than ever but they will have to adapt and many will have to learn to work outside the system. It was suggested at hacking education that teachers are like bank tellers in the 1970s. I don't agree but I do think they are like newspaper reporters in the 1990s.
8) Credentialing and accreditation in the traditional sense (diplomas) will become less important as the student's work product becomes more available to be sampled and measured online.
9) Testing and assessment will play more of a role in adapting the teaching process. A good example of this is how video games constantly adapt to the skill level of the player to create the perfect amount of creative tension. Adaptive learning systems will soon be able to do the same for students.
10) Spaces for learning (schools and libraries) will be re-evaluated. It was suggested that Starbucks is the new library. I don't think that will be the case but the value of dedicated physical spaces for learning will decline. It has already happened in the world of professional education.
11) Learning is bottom up and education is top down. We'll have more learning and less education in the future
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