Archaic examination culture of UK universities must be reformed

The use of examinations when other more sophisticated real-world assessment is available seems increasingly strange, says Craig Mahoney

八月 12, 2021
Students taking an exam
Source: iStock

Even those celebrating their A-level and Scottish Higher results this week will have felt a heightened sense of anxiety about their preparedness for university and, in particular, the formal examinations.

It is not surprising. Unlike typical cohorts, this year’s A-level students have faced a hugely challenging time during months of lockdown with a rapid shift to online learning and the cancellation of exams.

However, while these cancellations have been unsettling for many students and undoubtedly brought additional tension at an already stressful juncture, it need not be detrimental to their higher education journeys. That would be even more true if progressive universities seized this opportunity to review student evaluation by moving to a more robust structure of real-world assessment.

The current model of examination favours students who possess strong powers of memory and recall. But it is applied knowledge and skills that really matter – and education should be designed and delivered in a way that confers lifelong benefits for learners, beyond the lecture rooms and labs.

Seldom in life, beyond education, are we locked in a room and then required to recall information or create a coherent narrative in a time-limited period, without access to information or permission to speak with others. So why do we think exam-based assessments are fair, realistic or useful?

If you want to test memory and recall, it’s probably okay. To determine other, better, more useful life skills – such as communication, team working, problem solving, collaboration and critical thinking – exams are not the answer. Let’s get a grip on what assessment is for and design modern and progressive methods for evaluating potential that are fit for purpose, fair and appropriate. 

There is an irrefutable need for practice-based assessments – a student nurse demonstrating they can deliver a baby using a simulator, a sports science student showing how to take oxygen consumption data from a subject, or an engineering student being able to show their capability in using a mass spectrometer. Tangible, real-world assessment that allows students to demonstrate the full range of graduate skills and attributes required to be successful, lifelong learners.

Recently, universities across the globe were challenged through the pandemic to completely rethink pedagogy and demonstrate both agility and a capacity to change swiftly. The resilience and innovation shown by education institutions as they implemented these changes, while ensuring they still delivered quality experiences for students, has been inspirational.

Universities must now be even more determined in creating a fully inclusive culture that aligns curriculum objectives with the needs, preferences and circumstances of the next generation of learners. Real opportunities exist for progressive institutions to completely reimagine pedagogy and move to a more robust structure of real-world assessment. It is time we modernised the existing model of examination, commensurate with the way we are modernising our approach to the delivery of learning.

I am proud that, here at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), we are already at an advanced stage in completely transforming our pedagogical approach to ensure that we continue to deliver purposeful, dynamic and accessible pedagogy in a way that meets the needs of our diverse student body and genuinely improves our students’ experiences and outcomes.

Universities like UWS, that exist at least in part to make direct and tangible contributions to the level of skill, innovation and capability in their local communities, have an obligation to ensure their assessment of those skills and capabilities is modern, forward-looking and uses the best available practices and technologies. 

I have long been passionate about the modernisation of the existing assessment structure in universities and the use of practice-based assessment as a more accurate measure of graduate knowledge and skills. The pandemic, and the societal challenges it has highlighted, has only strengthened my view that a broader, more holistic approach to attainment is needed.

Today’s students are the leaders of the future and, to take on the monumental challenges we face as a globally connected society – including inequality, the global health crisis and the climate emergency – modern learners increasingly demand a pedagogical approach that is more adaptive and human-centred. We must seize the opportunity for positive change and deliver modern institutions that inspire and support students beyond their formal education and throughout their lives.

It is my hope that, in the coming months, positive change to current exam practices will continue to take place across the education sector and universities will continue adopting and embracing further flexibility; taking a truly progressive approach to evolving and delivering the world-class higher education for which the UK education sector is rightly renowned.

Craig Mahoney is principal and vice-chancellor of University of the West of Scotland.

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Reader's comments (10)

Although practical work is essential in many subjects, including my own (Engineering), it is also necessary that students are able to compete in an ever more ruthless world of work. Keeping examinations to test what they can do (as opposed to what a group can do) should thus still form part of the assessment process.
Teaching ethics for computer science, I have found that a 24-hour 'takeaway' open book examination produces a higher quality of assessment - including better discrimination between the best and the rest. I don't want to go back to a memory-test 2-hour paper.
Utilising multiple assessment strategies helps avoid just the short term learning that examinations maintain. However, it isn't just down to Universities, in my programme we have to abide by decisions made by professional bodies.
While I can see the importance of practice based assessment for practice based disciplines, many disciplines are not practice based. How do you do a practice-based assessment of a philosopher? Often this is the role take on by dissertations in such subjects - course work that is more similar to professional activities in those subjects. But these can be very time consuming, both for students and for staff marking them. Our (biology) students do a 12 week practical dissertation/research project, and probably takes me 5 hours to mark each one all told. That doesn't scale to having all assessment done that way for hundreds of students. Even coursework essays still take at least twice as long as their exam-written counterparts and coursework essays have the same problems for setting regurgitation questions as exams do.
Agree entirely. Indeed most (all?) university disciplines have strong components of "knowledge", "understaning" etc, which are not entirely practice, even if there are practice based elements.
I wonder what planet Craig Mahoney has been living on. Does he really think universities have not been assessing students' practical skills - where relevant to their courses - for decades? For example, laboratory work and (for higher years) project work always has been a large part component of assessments in physics, and similarly in other STEM disciplines. But examinations are also necessary to test the breadth of subject knowledge and understanding of concepts (Mahoney's hypothetical engineering student might be able to use a mass spectrometer, but do they understand how it works?). It is a fallacy that examinations predominantly test memory and recall - if the exams Mahoney set (if he ever did set exams) were like this, perhaps they were not very well designed.
Doctors, dentists, scientists, engineers, nurses artists, musicians, architects, archaeologists and many more are all assessed on their practical abilities in real world situations. Unseen exams are just one vital component to a fair and full assessment of all skills. Unseen exams do not just test memory they assess critical and original thinking. It’s actually important to know stuff in order to do this.
Here is an alternative take. Universities waste too much time on this.Give a completion certificate to those that meet minium acceptable standards (practical skills or theoretical knowledge). Employers can worry about the recuriting the most suitable candidate from those that apply for jobs by devising their own tests. Most do that anyway. Funnily enough..universities themselves so this. PhDs are not graded like an exam. So when univeristies want to hire a fresh PhD, they conduct interviews/ask the canidates to do a mock lecture/grill them on their research paper etc. In other words they conduct various tests to satisfy themselves that they have got most suitable candidate. So even without the sorting provided by grades in an exam, universities are able to pick out those that are suitable for them. Why wont this work in other situations?
This article is second rate. Exams have existed for a very good reason to separate the wheat from the chaff. When well designed they are an excellent test of students abilities. There are a variety of means of assessment used in Universities these days which is great but abolishing exams is a plain stupid idea.
Separating wheat from the chaff is a binary decision. The ever more complex mechanisms of examining students goes beyond that. It is finer grading of the wheat that is what the examination system is trying to achieve.