Aussie school trials use of gadgets in exams

Sensible...with a caveat or two...

Good to see that someone understands that grading someone's performance shouldn't just be about how well they can write in an exam. The ability to RESEARCH and understand what you're reading is incredibly important and overlooked. Given the time constraint of an exam it is also a good lesson in how to capture and find knowledge and information quickly, succinctly and how to remain within scope of the original question. The other important thing is learn how to derive new knowledge from the already existing and HOW TO CITE your sources!!!

Full marks there...

Just in case this comment is too sensible for El Reg...full marks for Paris too - she can cite me anytime...

Excellent idea

As long as it's managed correctly (and in the right subjects), this is the way exams should be held. I work in the education field for a large Fortune 500 company and one of the major challenges we face at the moment is 'closing the gap' between school-level education and real world requirements. There is a distinct gap between when schools or universities say somebody is ready for the world of business, and when they can be considered truly effective - any initiatives which aim to reduce this difference are fine by me.

About Time

I'm all for it - as long as credit is given when credit is due!!!

The amount of students who indulge in plagiarism is unbelievable - nothing wrong with quoting a source and providing personal comment.

Creative Commons is doing for media what Open Source did in programming.

I won't mention the comments a senior lecturer made when a design student presented her degree show without so much as a thanks to all the individuals and companies that helped her 'pull together' the final submission - lets just say she might have got a better degree had she acknoledged where others had helped . . . and no i don't teach english so no point correcting it :)

Paris - Cause she always knows who made the tape . . .

Makes sense, sorta.

If you have to write an essay or whatever it's only fair to have access to a maximum of information, since that information isn't the goal of the class. In the exact sciences, though, pupils should have most information remembered simply because looking it up every time you use it takes too much time. Of course, this is best achieved by using said information. If I hadn't used Pythagoras' theorem as much as I have I likely wouldn't know it right now.

I always thought...

that exams were there to establish the level of understanding and knowledge that any individual had acquired of the subject matter. Therefore, said individual should, prior to the exam, already have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the subject and be able to recall it.

It's called learning.

Because the world at large doesn't provide universal 24/7 access to *the information superhighway* and you have to be able to use the grey matter for something more advanced than the input mechanism to your favourite search engine.

Just because you can assemble sufficient relevant information in an organised way, it doesn't prove that you know what said information means, or what to do with it.

Can't be any worse

Even back in my exam days, the answers were pretty much given along with the the questions in GCSE exam papers. Maths exams would have a page full of the required formulae, history papers would have tables of facts about the events the questions referred to etc. And they say exams have been dumbed down since then!

If web access is available instead of all that information, rather than in addition to it, then at least we'll be marking pupils on their ability to perform a Google search, instead of their ability to read a piece of paper.

"Real world?"

By "real world" situation do they mean that you can miss the deadline and take it home to work on over the weekend, just so long as it's on the boss's desk before he gets in at 9 on Monday.

No?

Then I see the "freedom" as being little more than a distraction. Research should be carried out slowly and methodically. If you have to rush it, it's not research and you're just teaching bad habits.

@So So Idea

If it was an english exam, they are testing their usage of language not their knowledge of MLK.

As long as such gadgets are used on math, science, or any tests where there is an exact answer (that can be copied/duplicated easily) then there shouldn't be any problem. Actually this is a very good idea because many younger (and older) people do not know how, or that it's required (in some cases) to cite sources formally and informally.

Sounds good

First of all:

there have been and will be open book exams/tests and closed book exams/tests.

Secondly:

the exam should make clear what the learning outcomes are (there ain't no point in someone chasing weblinks under a false impression that a greater number of websites accessed increases the score).

Thirdly:

Well, that seems to be a more constructive approach to testing but as all test do it will favour people with a propensity do to stuff that way (as opposed to say theoretical learners). It is about on par with grabbing a bunch of trainee brickies and saying "OK build a wall, here are your specs. This is an assessed piece of work."

on the other hand...

this is teaching the brats that they need never actually _learn_ anything, that any question requires internet access to answer, and that they don't need to _think_ in order to achieve. Without their precious mobile, they will become completely useless. Dumb idea in my book. (I live in Oz, relatively nearby). Paris, cos she isn't _Entirely_ useless without her mobe...

Open-Google Tests

I just finished college (US degree- a Bachelor's program) and had a few classes that had open-Google tests. I did well with those- but they were pretty much always structured such that you HAD to think on your own. Yeah, I access to reference material, but I had to actually convince the professor that it was my own work and my own words. It definitely did help bridge the gap between rote memorization and application just a formula or such and being able to pull information you don't have memorized together.

Some things are realistic to want memorized, such as how to configure your computer and network sufficiently to be able to get to the web, but other things were obscure enough that I don't remember how to do them after passing them on the test- but I DO know how to find the information I need. At least at my school, the average technical student was taught how to perform the tasks on the conceptual level, and a few specific implementations. Beyond that, we were expected to use every reference material we could get our hands on, be it Google or a book.

Personally, I felt that open tests like the sort described tended to do a far better job of letting me show what I had learned in the course than a lot of other exams, which frequently were multiple choice or short answer of a memorized problem/solution.

In a business environment, which is usually more valuable to a company: someone who learns the specific tasks that are needed on a daily basis easily, and can use reference material when needed, or someone who can do a certain set of tasks extremely well, but needs a lot more time and hand holding to get up to speed on anything else? I've definitely noticed that a lot of companies I was interviewing with wanted someone who could use reference material more.

A maths professor allowed this

On my technical university.

You were even allowed to use a notebook with Mathematica or Maple.

Most people believed the exam would be super-easy like this - but the prof just formulated the questions in a way that made notebooks next to useless.

You first had to get a grasp of the story that was described, before you could actually start doing calculations.

Lot's of people failed and he had to stop this concept later...

I didn't own a notebook anyway and I did never failed. You just had to do the exercises.

Great idea. But

There should be a way for the schools to profit from the use of its resources rather than the ISPs and/or phone companies.