Digital exams?

It is the middle of exam season and I’ve just read an incredibly interesting article by Abbie Wightwick writing the in the Western Mail (Saturday 1st June 2014). Here she argues the case for pupils being able to use digital technology in exams instead of being asked to handwrite everything.

Here is an extract from the article:

Exam boards seem not to have noticed but children and teenagers tap rather than write.

From primary school they are encouraged to become computer literate and it’s a rare 16-year-old who isn’t more digitally savvy than most adults they know. Hand them a laptop and they can whizz off an essay, but for exams they must return to the dark ages of biros and paper. Just when they are under intense stress and pressure, exam candidates are required to use materials they’re not used to. By the time they get into that exam hall they have spent years using a keyboard and mouse to trawl the internet for learning.

They may be on Facebook some of the time but they’re also asked to hand in essays and course work neatly printed out and why not? Why return to the dark ages of teachers having to squint over barely-decipherable handwriting when we have computers?

Thanks to those exam candidates of yesteryear doing good things with their equations, we’re now in the digital, electronic world of learning.

Back in the 1970s and ’80s we were at a huge advantage. Our hand muscles had been training for years by the time we sat exams – a marathon in hand exercise. Writing legibly at speed is an art that has to be learned over years, you can’t suddenly mug up two weeks before D-Day. Sadly the exam system hasn’t kept up. While the rest of the world has moved on, it’s still asking students to write at length in hand, something they won’t be asked to do ever again except in future exams.

Surely the time has come to devise a system where students can use computers to tap out their answers?

There is a school of thought that suggests we should be training pupils to produce neat handwriting and developing this skill is important. What we mustrecognise is that using a keyboard/screen/track pad/mouse and so on is a skill which most pupils have developed over a number of years. It is the way in which they choose to communicate in much the same way as was a pen in years gone by. Perhaps there is something to be said for making examinations digital………

 

 

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