Can we bring chits to the Exam Hall?: My little experience with Evaluation

12 May, 2021

Image Credit: Author’s own

I clearly remember the horror of examination weeks throughout my school and college days. I would look tired and sick, and feel nauseated and anxious, primarily due to lack of sleep and fear of judgement. I scored quite well, but that is another matter. Looking back, I think I scored well not because I was the best amongst everyone but I smartly figured out the examination and evaluation pattern.

Evaluation for us mostly centred around gulping down a large amount of material in a short span of time, eventually to let it out on the day of examination, and forget about it. Many times, conversations with friends would reveal that some topics were very interesting but we did not spend time delving deep into those topics. Most of my learning or the things that I still remember from my student life are the lessons where I played an active rather than a passive role in preparing the topic or engaged in detailed conversations about it with faculty members, family and friends.

I am still confused if it is okay to not terrorize the examination week and not make it sound like 'the only big test' of a student's life, which if she fails, she will be ruined forever. Neither the nausea and sickness is of any use to me today, nor do the judgements or validation of people that I was seeking at that point in time matter to me now. What matters is, how much I have grown as a person to understand 'what I want' and 'deal with the world' full of personal and professional challenges. I hardly got any training in this regard. How do I deal with a failure or a heartbreak or a situation where I am projected as the accused while being the victim? How do I treat people around me? How do I nurture a difference of opinion with a colleague? How do I answer a question where I am being discriminated against because of my religion or gender? At least, I should have been cautioned about these situations and sensitized about the skills required.

I understand that many reforms have been brought about in the past few decades and models and taxonomies have been discussed and implemented, but I am not sure if we are still at a stage where we are able to understand and evaluate students effectively and efficiently. Carrying chits during our time was a big offence. I personally believe that a system where chits are legitimized would be much better because chits can only give information, they cannot make one think. Another big cheating mistake was to have an open book or notes hidden under the table. Can we allow students to carry notes? Why not? I feel if we expect every student to remember the notes, we are expecting all of them to have similar abilities and learning styles. At the cost of sounding stupid, I deliberate about these questions - Are we trying to create exactly same individuals or do we have space for individuality? Are we allowing them space to nurture creativity or not? Why does everyone want to become a data scientist today? Is our population or unemployment the problem? Is it unemployment or unemployability? These questions are puzzling. I recently asked my students to write their SWOT analysis and interestingly, more than 90 percent of the students, wrote that their weakness is "being too emotional"; each one thinks that the others are exploiting. I think we need to teach our students to be emotionally independent. We have totally neglected that, and focused on punishing them for poor memory.

Can we allow chits in the examination hall? Why or why not? I acknowledge that open book examinations come with their own challenges. How about having no examinations at all or having a student evaluate her own performance? I don't know. When I started my career in academia, my father gave me advice that has helped me immensely. One, simplify complex things as much as possible for the students and two, do not hurt them; treat them as you would want your younger brother to be treated by his teachers. So far it is going okay, but my questions about the education system keep on increasing in number and complexity everyday.