The exist point of view on education that conventional method of assessing knowledge is not the best method. Some people believe in that while others don’t believe. I am a person hwo belong to a group of people between of two opposite sides. But generally I am against ‘pen and paper’ examinations.
In my opinion conventional exams as pen and paper exams are not effective. ‘Pen and paper’ examination involves alone preparation and presentation own knowledge of a particular student. However this assumption often is not fulfilled. Students are able to cheat on exams. For instance, when students don’t manage to prepare for an exam they can make a cheat sheet and use it during testing. And this particular student will be able to gain the highest score even if they don’t know anything from the program of the subject.
Also pen and paper exams are not interesting. It’s really boring for some students write something for long time. And such students are able to ruin the exams just because they cannot concentrate on writing and can make some mistakes. Although for example if such students would have direct conversation with professor it will be more nature and student will be involved in the process taking the exam.
Even though I consider that pen and paper exam is not good for assesing educational achivment, teachers have a lot of studnets and they can’t ask evryone individually. That’s probably why we have such exams right now.
While pen and paper exams are flawed they remain practical. But from my side if we want to have interesting and honest system of assessment we need to reject such exams.