The evaluation method in modern education system is changed from traditional exams, but its effectiveness remains debatable. In my opinion, testing student’s ability should not rely on traditional paper-based exam solely. In this essay I will explain my reasoning.
One of the major drawbacks of traditional exams is its limited syllabus, which shrink the students’ knowledge. Moreover, it kills the inner creativity of students because to achieve a good score they have to focus on specific course material. While evaluation tools like project, presentation and open book exam help to develop innovative mind, bring out inner creativity and nurture logical thinking ability. Furthermore, continuous assessment reduces mental stress, while time bound exams effect student mental health negatively especially on elementary school student.
Another key positive impact of continuous assessment is fostering extracurricular activity and soft skill, since student do not need to sit for scheduled exam like quarterly or half yearly. This time bounded evaluation system creates an imaginary barrier on student’s mind which restrict them to focus on developing soft skill. In contrast practical experiment-oriented tests help student to acquire skill like leadership, problem solving and time management.
Some people argue that traditional exams offer fair form of assessment of students capability, since student get equal time for preparation and during assessment everyone has to answer same question within a specified time, whereas in project-based evaluation student select the their own topic for presentation. This argument can be explained as, the aim of modern education system is finding out and nurturing the special ability of each student. For this reason, they are assigned different topic for assessment, students have the freedom of choosing their favorite topic. The purpose of the evaluation is to assess what are they doing on their favorite task.
To fulfill the actual aim of education, modern evaluation tools offer a reliable and fair assessment of students capability while traditional exams have the limitation of finding out the inner creativity of student. Therefore I believe adopting project, presentation and group work based assessment system will bring fruitful outcome.