Exams over, but no celebrations

The only thing I don't like about being a student is taking exams. As I was telling someone, an exam is like a FA Cup match. No matter how well prepared you are, you can never guarantee that you will win the match. Exams are also disadvantageous to older students, where our "RAM size and processor speed" are not as high as they used to be.

Should an assessment be solely testing your understanding of a topic? With the tight time constraint in an exam, the answers are more instinctive than well thought, so it isn't really a very fair test of understanding. Or perhaps a fair test should cover a person's capability to memorize all the details in their heads, and the ability to form (hand written) answers from them in the shortest time? Maybe, but with information so easily available nowadays, perhaps this ability is not as crucial as in the days gone past when information is restricted to selected experts and libraries. Besides, tight time constraint isn't really that crucial in the engineering world, where the ability to generate a precisely correct answer, even if it takes more time, is preferred over giving a half correct answer -- being as useless as a totally wrong answer-- in half the time.

And that is why I feel quite frustrated after finishing the exams. I know that the answers that I have submitted is not a good indication of the knowledge that is up here in my head. If there isn't that 2 hours time pressure there, I would certainly be able to come up with a perfect (ok, a much better) answer, yes, even if I am not allowed to refer to my notes.

I much prefer open assessments (or as we call it in TP, "assignments"), not that it is easier. Open assessments are more like a NBA Play-Off series. It is a longer process, but besides giving you a chance to recover from an "off-day", I feel it is a more accurate test of a person's ability to apply his knowledge in the real world. But of course from the examiner's point of view, there are issues not present in closed book exams which needs to be tackled, plagiarism being one of them. Here in York, plagiarism is taken very seriously and the university put in lots of effort to ensure every student thoroughly understands what plagiarism is all about. But that would be a topic just as lengthy for another blog entry.