Exams divide the student population into two parts. One who's afraid to take the exam, and another one who's well prepared for the exam and revising. In your case which one out of two are you? You, your parents, and your peers should know that the grades achieved are not a pure reflection of your intelligence or mastery of the subject, but rather a way to check your ability to recall information and solve problems under pressure. If you need an idea about how to write expert level content, you can use the AI essay writer tool. The traditional model of education relied on one final exam for a vast period of time, which decided whether you studied and understood a topic or not.
What Factors Actually Measured in an Exam?
An exam is considered a way to measure a student's knowledge of a given subject directly. However, having a closer look, you can know that exams measure a vast range of factors. Beyond showing the mastery of the subject, exams are tools that can evaluate cognitive skills, critical thinking, psychological attributes and other factors to influence performance. Discussed below are factors that are actually measured in an exam.
Your Memory Power
An exam tries to examine your knowledge and reproduce the learned material from your memory. But here's the twist: exams don't just measure memory power but rely on different types of memory.
The first type of memory that gets tested is short-term and working memory. Often known to hold and process information actively. It makes you juggle through your memory by requiring you to solve multiple types of questions.
Stress Performance
When giving exams, you are constantly under pressure with factors such as time, how close your professor is to you and other options too. When you can't remember a formula or concept you read before the exam, at that time you can become stressed.
Taking too much stress can lower your cognitive abilities and reduce your capacity to process exam questions.
But you can overcome the stress point through understanding the concepts better and creating answers in your own words.
Test-Taking Skills
There are some strategies that you can apply before, during, and after an exam.
In the test hall, you should panic after looking at the test paper. Also, try not to look at others for answers, as it will lower your self-confidence.
Make sure to manage your time and use the assignment helper tool types correctly so that you don't have to ask for extra time in an exam.
After the test, make a habit of not discussing as it can lower your self-esteem and interest in studying for other upcoming exams.
Practical Skills
Nowadays, to assess a student's understanding of topics, exams are no longer beneficial. Now, students are judged based on their project and presentation skills. It is actually better now as exam-related stress is lower.
In some abstract subjects like science, maths, and english projects, experiments are conducted to provide marks, lowering the importance of final exams.
Projects can also be used to create a strong portfolio and demonstrate practical skills more authentically.
What Exam Misses to Measure
From ancient times, exams have served as a primary, and often the only way, to evaluate the understanding of students and academic progress. It decides whether you are ready to level up in terms of education or not. Often, the final grade is seen as a definite decision on a student's mastery of the subject. However, it is a seemingly objective measure, and many people who have not visited schools or colleges tend to have more understanding and experience.
Your Creative Skill
Exams are seen as enemies of creativity. If you were to try to become creative by generating your own answers, you would frequently get no marks in that question or a lower mark. In exams, what teachers actually want are straightforward answers rather than your creative content.
Exams neglect the creative skill because students often can't make sense of the end of the answers, or why they started to form the answer in that way.
If you want to be creative, you should read blogs and articles available on the Assignment Desk website.
Understanding of Topics
Many students make the mistake of memorising complex topics instead of trying to understand them. Which is why when they get a question after the topic being twisted, they can't solve the question.
The benefit of a correct understanding of a complex topic is that you explain it in their own words, evaluate and create an answer to complex questions they might be given and apply the information available in real-world scenarios.
Forms of Intelligence
In a class, lot of students are present, so they also have different types of learners.
Teaching students is done by a single teacher, which is why not everyone can get one-on-one attention. It lowers the understanding of students.
Single test at the end of the compilation of class, leaving different forms of intelligence exams miss. The list includes kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and creative intelligence.
External Factors
External factors, which are not tested in an exam, include the home and family environment. It includes family's socioeconomic status, and parental involvement. Chronic health issues leave an impact on students' ability to focus and perform better in academics. Therefore, they should consider exercising daily.The exam's score might have failed to distinguish between a student who struggled due to a lack of resources and a student who underperformed due to a lack of effort.
Conclusion
By now, you understand that traditional exams often mislead as a measure of a student's abilities. Even so, it can capture only a narrow range of factors, such as memory power, stress performance and test skills. There are many qualities in a human being that needs to be tested, and are critically required for success. If you need help with subjects related content, you can use AI essay writer tools available online. Hopefully, you understand the importance of exams and what they are missing. Now let your studying institution know about this, so that they can change the testing approach.
Comments