Different Types of Exams: Do They Deliver Excellence?

We are all aware of the exams in every school and how they provide a feedback on the student's overall knowledge. The idea of exams started way back the 19th century after an American Philanthropist and businessman introduce the idea of examinations. Henry Fischel created the standard evaluation. He created this to indicate the students overall knowledge in their academic performance.

The concept of examinations has spread across the world and this is what we are doing now. At the end of the academic period, we have to take exams to evaluate and test our overall understanding of the entire lesson. It is also undeniable that examinations are one of the most stressful part in a student's life. Sometimes it can cause anxiety and depression once the student has failed.

I want to list the different types of exam and express my thoughts about these kinds of assessment. Do they provide excellence to every student?

Multiple choice

This is the easiest form of examination. A student can in fact answer this kind of examination without studying. If they have a wide vocabulary and general knowledge, the chances are they can answer most of the questions correctly. On the other hand, the downside of it is that you cannot really assure the certain knowledge of the student. You have no idea if they got the correct answers because they know it or they are just simply predicting.

Identification type

This one is a difficult examination type. Identification is an objective type of learning. It is a process of identifying the correct answer being asked in the question. The advantages about it is that you can really test if the student know something or not. However, it has huge disadvantage. Identification type of examination focuses only on the memorization. If you would ask me about it, memorizing without understanding what you are trying to memorize is useless. You can memorize a lot of animals without understanding their origin and habitat.

Enumeration type

Enumeration is almost similar to the Identification type. It is also in an objective form. This is a type of exam where you have to mention a number of things one by one. It is as difficult as identification. It only becomes more difficult when you have to list the things in ascending or descending order.

Essay type

The essay type is another way of evaluating the student's knowledge. The advantage of it is that you can really examine whether the student understand the entire lesson or not. On the other hand, essay type may be full of opinions which goes beyond the topic. If you would ask me about it, the essay type is my favorite in every examinations. I can totally express everything that I understand and learn from the lesson through making an essay.

Examinations are one of the best ways to test a student's knowledge. The ability to pass every examination and getting a good grade is indeed valuable. However, I see a negative impact from it. Students only study to aim for high grades. It's really good to get higher grades but when getting a good grade is the only purpose and not learning from it, I call it a waste of time. This is also the reason why I do not pressure myself when it comes to grades because what's really important to me is that I understand our lesson.

I like the structure of every examination. It totally boosts the students' academic learning and knowledge but it shouldn't be the only focus. There are other areas to focus on, such as letting the student think, letting the student be involved and not just memorize and more real life applications of learnings so that the students will relate. Exams are indeed vital in shaping a student's learning but it shouldn't be the only ground for testing the entire knowledge.

October 27, 2022

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