h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Over the past 15 years or so, coursework has become the vogue thing for allowing candidates to do their best work etc. Unfortunately in the same period the growth of the internet has led to candidates being able to easily download / buy coursework."

With reference to the aforementioned assertion, discuss how exams are the 'new' future of testing candidates to ensure that all work is their own.

BBS

Exam's are not the future....
You can be averaging A's all year, then fall down to a c/d in the exam.
Mayebe steal the American system where the grades throughout the year on small test's are averaged, and then have that grade.

I agree major exams are very nerve wracking things. i am not sure what types of exams or systems are used in the UK but in the US the smaller tests are much more easy going and alow the student to test on subjects while still fresh in the mind. this is very helpful because the student is not having to worry about facts from the start of the scholastic session. many times i was able to raise my grades because of testing. i am very anti-homework. and it showed in my scores untill tests came along, and i was able to kick my scors back up just fine with the series of test throught the year.

I agree exams are definently not the future, after going to school for 11 years it is not fair for a student to fall at the final hurdle and get lower grades that they don't deserve. If you are not feeling 100% or you have hayfever, you are guaranteed not to do as well as you should. (trust me, this happened today to me in a 2 hour history exam )
I agree that coursewoek copied from the internet is a problem, so the best way to go about gaining grades is through teacher assessment. Your subject teacher grades you on your performance in lessons. like the diploma scheme idea which was then canned by the government

Exams are better than coursework - with coursework, cheating is SO easy, plus you have so much time to draft and re-draft it, your teachers help you, you discuss it with other students, and it ends up being half your own work, half everyone else's, and sometimes not even that! It doesn't test what you've LEARNT, just how well you can use your 'resources' - anybody can write a decent piece of coursework with the help of a couple of textbooks and the internet! Exams are definitely the way to test a student's knowledge. You never know what's going to come up, so you have to know everything, so, then, if you do well it's because you know your stuff, which is great. If half your grade comes from work that may not even be your own, it's completely pointless!

The American system isn't great either, just cuz you know what homeostasis is in a test in October doesn't mean you're going to remember it in May... Their system just means students can learn little bits of stuff for a test and then forget it to go on to the next one.

Sadly that is true. many times it does turn out that way... having the data down tot he letter testing and then forgetting it as soon as the test is over but the way i look at it is this: if you want to learn you will remember the data and file it away in your brain for later use if you do not comit it to memory then when the Finals come around to review everything at the end of the school year and see who knows what then it is those that chose to forget the facts that are left behind. of course i am a very harsh person who thinks in the Darwinian ideas of "survival of the fittest."

A new idea in US schools is no more breaks. (spring break, summer break, chiristams break) this is a fine idea and i know many places have done this for years. but to the US it is alien. the odd thing is most students don't seem to upset by it but the parents whine (like they do over here... constantly.... everyday... without fricking end!) that they "don't get to see their kids anymore."

(oh, and while we are talking about exams and such thing please excuse any grammatical errors doing this at work whil my supervisor is in a "walky" mood )

One of the things I've realised from getting my degree is that it's not actually about what you know. It's about being able to show that you understand what is needed at that level of learning.

For example, I did a degree in Sports Science; which will be great if I ever need to teach someone how to long jump, to understand about the physiology of the knee-jerk, submaximal VO2 tests, different sociological perspectives of football hooliganism, or how attentional narrowing affects matters.

My point being that Sports Science is a whole broader subject than just those little areas, and any job I take will require me to understand other areas of the subject.

What my 2:1 degree signifies is ... that I am capable of critical evaluation of other peoples work and being able to learn that. If the degree is well-constructed I'd have learned those skills whether I did Film Studies, Art, IT or Molecular Biology.

BBS

I guess I'm just a little sore about this subject cuz I'm in the middle of study leave - I have this year's 3 modules to revise for plus I have to go over the 3 from last year for the unifying paper - I really do have to know everything I'm ever supposed to have learnt! luckily, I do remember most of the stuff from last year... if I'd just forgotten it I would be screwed.

I agree that people who actually want to learn it will remember it, and I guess the fact that they know their stuff shows through when they're applying for jobs later on. Knowing a little about everything is sometimes better than specialising in one area.

That's a good point actually... I think I'll move on from genetics and revise something else.

I do think that the British school system is a bit hard on people who can't remember everything all at once - Even though you can take modules in Jan as opposed to June, and you can retake them twice if you want to. Apprenticeships are great, but the thing where students only have to take a couple of GCSE's? You can't get any further with 3 good GCSEs than you can with 10 mediocre ones.

(I'm also a bit of a Darwinist, some people are just oxygen theives.)

Exams are - sadly maybe - the best way to judge ability.

Look at this way - when do you really, truly, honestly show your true colours. When your under the most pressure? of course.

In the real world nobody sits down and calculates your performance across the year and gives you a pat on the head at the end.

They might SAY they do - but real success is entirely dependant on how you handle pressure. How often do you hear of the 'hero' of the hour or the 'moment of madness' that costs millions.

Make no mistake - the coursework model might be better for an all round eductation but it's no preperation for the real world.

There.


Guess whose having a bad day at the office..

I would like to reply to a point made by quid pro crow earlier on the subject of corsework.

I would like to point out that coursework is very easy to cheat on, but in certain subjects, coursework is vital and has a very good place in the current system, and needs to be kept. The two main subjects that this refers to are technology and art. These are two subjects in which the coursework tests the technical capablity of the student, whether the student has the capability to actually make what they have been set or have set out to do.
In tech, coursework is yes affected by text books. But in the real world, you would be able to pick up a text-book for reference. And it doesn't mean that you will make a good piece of coursework. That depends upon how much work you put in and how good you are.
Art maybe inspired by a text-book, but I don't think that it would mean that it would be easy to cheat because you would still have to paint it on a canvas or draw it on apiece of paper.

this point is true but it is because tech (i call it D.T.), art and others like music and sometimes P.E. are more practical and less academic. another example is drama. the final exams is a performance so without coursework they would not be able to show any understanding of plays etc. that they have studies in classes.

also i think that the thing about having to know everything for the final exam and that it is hard is true, and i also think it is true that if you want to learn something then you take it in better.

this leads me on to a point about gcse's and a levels. at gcse students do pick their subjects but they pick some subjects that that they are going to have to give up when they go into a level so for the actual exams it is the case that some of the students will forget everything about a topic after the exam.

however at a level because less subjects are studied and the students select what they want to do they are going to want to learn about it more and so are going to get a better and more long lasting understanding of those subjects than they would do at gcse. and because they have less subjects they are able to concentrate on them more and hopefully get a better result.

"
Exams are - sadly maybe - the best way to judge ability.

Look at this way - when do you really, truly, honestly show your true colours. When your under the most pressure? of course.

In the real world nobody sits down and calculates your performance across the year and gives you a pat on the head at the end.

They might SAY they do - but real success is entirely dependant on how you handle pressure. How often do you hear of the 'hero' of the hour or the 'moment of madness' that costs millions.

Make no mistake - the coursework model might be better for an all round eductation but it's no preperation for the real world.

There.


Guess whose having a bad day at the office..
"

But because of these exam's, all our education focus's on teaching us how to pass exam's, and we don't learn practical skill's that we would need in the real world.

As I'm from Austria I never had that kind of exams at school, only one big exam at the end of the last year and tests in all other years.
In the main subjects (Maths, German, English and for some people other languages) we had 6 tests each year, each of them lasting 1 hour; 2 in the last two years.
In all other subjects (an we've got many of them) we had as many and as difficult tests as the teachers wanted them to be; usually 4 each year, some oral some written.
I prefer this system to exams at the end of the year. It keeps you learning constantly and as one test is often based on the previous one you are not allowed to forget anything anyhow.

The final exam ("Matura") has two parts: written and oral.
The written exams are usually in May and there's only one exam on one day. You've got them in Maths, German and one or two languages and they last 4-5 hours each.
The oral exams are in June. If you had two languages in written exam you have to do only 3 subjects, otherwise 4. These subjects have to include at least one language, the others are to choose and it's really unimportant which one you take, nobody will ask you later, you only have to pass through them.
All oral exams are on one day, you enter the room; all teachers you had, the head and a foreign head are watching you. You get your questions, 20min time of preparation, 10min "conversation" with your teacher, leave the room and wait until they call you for the next subject.
In fact it's unimportant what marks you have on the Matura, you pass it and are allowed to go to uni, but it's important if you want to do some other schools or so.

It's funny somehow to read your opinions about "you have to know everything", because my teachers had the opinion: in a time like this it's impossible to know everything, we can't teach you all things you have to know, we can only give you some basics, but we have to teach you to use your resources, that's what you'll need in the future. I have to say: I absolutely agree, at least in a school system like ours, with about 12 different subjects for everybody (I hope they will keep it like that).

I don't think exams are really neccesary at school, if you make it through several years of testst like ours that should be enough. The last exam we've got is not that bad, maybe a bit of uni-preparation, but if you've been good in all years before it's usually no problem, when you've always been bad you've got problems... so it doesn't really show anything teachers didn't know before.

that was a very long post... sorry

Yo Yo Yo

Thro out time, mankind has needed to define itself via tasks and achievements. Exams are one of these things and necessary. It is known that u r statistically more likely to end up as a homeless bum if you fail your exams..........If u pass them, u r more likely to have your own home(s), job and marry/ be with someone gorgeous + make love 4 times a day....wahay

So no pressure then..........

Take it from me...........I knows

Dr. Wattaray Bro

When I did GCSE's about five years ago, I remember thinking that coursework was a bit of a joke. In Resistant Materials, which is basically woodwork / metalwork, etc, we had a coursework component made up of a written "portfolio", something you made, and then an exam. But, there was too much emphasis on the coursework component that meant it had more weighting than the actual practical aspects of the course. This is bad, because most of the guys on the course were just interested in making stuff... Though there was important detail in the work involved with the portfolio, it's so dreary, long-winded and boring, that most just loose interest (which is possibly one of the reasons boys do so much worse than girls, of course). Surely something like woodwork should actually pay attention to practical skills. If you're at a state school and want to train to be a carpenter, surely it's better to be able to get involved in practical woodworking, than spending weeks on pointless questionnaires, and worrying about the industrial applications of everything.

Also: a lot of coursework (rather than exams) is marked in an incremental mark scheme, which is a list of tick-boxes for each grade. The marker starts at the bottom grade, and moves up. If you miss out a tick for one section, they have to stop... So, in RM coursework, if you didn't draw coloured borders on the pages of your written portfolio, it was decreed that you could **not** gain higher than a B grade. Similarly for IT; you could produce an almost perfect piece of coursework, but depending on which small piece you missed off (which could be something as trivial as "using headers and footers", or demonstrating that you know how to use different sized fonts) means the difference between an A* and, say, a C...

exams are a marker........but only one of the many that are used to measure u against.

It's hard for the examiners too u know..........for any exam to be good someone(S) has to fail.........but who. U gotta draw the line somewhere........and tough love if its u.........innit

I guess thats watt it's all about babays

Da Joyika +

i agree with you - i did Graphic design and art at GCSE and without the coursework and the sketchbooks you couldn't judge someone's ability in those kind of subjects. I did drop them after that, though, but you're definitely not wrong.

Acha acha acha

Exams are part of life...........they dot just stop at School, or University..........lawyers, doctors, etc have to do them post graduation. Also life will have it's share of interviews + other tests........

Get used to it.exams r here yo stay.

Wattaray

Bad day at the office notwithstanding, Last living boy has a point.

So, at school they teach you to pass exams. Good. A proportion of the marks available in an exam can be gained by having good exam technique. Now consider the techniques you have been given:
- To learn a subject to a given standard through teaching and revision
- To meet a deadline for exam preparation
- To optimise you exam marks through exam technique when you are working under pressure.

All this translates directly into the skills I need to do my job. I work in research and development, I have to learn new subjects all the time, sometimes with the help of a training course. I have project deadlines and intermediate milestones where I might have to present the results so far. I have to deliver the results to a customer and answer questions on my feet until they are satisfied with the result.

Please don't forget that exams are there to differentiate people according to ability, they aren't there to give everone a warm glow of satisfaction and a string of 'A's (or they didn't used to be). There are other threads to this conversation in which the issue of having sufficient time has been raised. Sometimes there isn't enought time in real life to do everything that needs to be done. The best performance in these circumstances is to evaluate which part of the job matters the most - this is straight back to one of the key skills of exam technique.

As for learning practical skills; the knowledge that I apply every day in my job did not exist when I did 'O' levels. The mathemtaics hasn't changed of course, neither has the English, although I note that apostrophies seems to be more popular than I remember

Yo Yo Bro

I believe science ait being given it's fair share in the education system of toddy..........all dis art nonsense is OK, but this country needs more scientists.....for God sake we have to import doctors + nurses into this place cos otherwise the Great British Public wouldn't be treated...............

Get more kids into the Sciences I say. Picasso + pottery can wait.

Wattaray Bro da Dog