Continuous Assessments
Chathurie Nupearachchi
Physicist with good vibes while acting multiple roles as a lecturer, researcher, education consultant, STEM activist, writer and speaker
How to face the stressful life related to continuous assessments in educational institutes?
Whether you like it or not, continuous assessment methods are there in the current education system as open book tests, closed book tests, assignments, reports, tutorial questions, viva etc. Each assessment methods have a big impact on the study methods of students, what they learn, how they use the new knowledge from surface learning to deep learning. I guess each evaluation and assessment methods can exert a stressful pressure on students in a unique way as the learning process and memory formation is different from student to student.
Each time, we get students who are at a lost in their selected subject, module or syllabus content and evaluation. So, what can we do to reduce stress amongst the students as teachers? Here are some tips that I follow to reduce the stress amongst the students due to continuous assessment methods.
1. Create awareness about their subject, module or syllabus evaluation methods. Stress is unavoidable with the workload and I guess we need to help our students to recognize stress in themselves as well as in others. As a result, the students will be able to handle situations in a better way.
2. Positive student-teacher relationship is a crucial thing to reduce stress. Most of the time, calm, empathetic presence with a listening skill have helped me a lot to guide the students to a reduced stress state. Actually, students need a reliable adult that they can trust in such situations.
3. I preach a lot about time management. I discuss the time management techniques that I use in my real life as well. Here, I wanted to emphasize the fact that, if you are well organized, then there is less stress.
4. As we are social creatures, we need to form relationships to connect with other humans. As a teacher I always keep this in mind when developing my lesson plans. By providing the feeling of socially connected in a face-to-face secure environment can help to build good relationships in the students group as well as in each individual’s lives. Good social relationships create the sense of belongingness which reduces cortisol and increases oxytocin.
5. Encourage an outdoor physical activity that can greatly reduce the stress levels in students.
6. I tell my personal stories to strengthen the bond between the students. Even I promote humour and laughter in my lectures to lighten up the mood in students as well as in myself.
7. Traditional assessment methods just check the understanding of both factual and conceptual level of the student where the teacher will just prepare the test paper. This should not be the approach of modern teachers. If you do so, then the students may have a difficulty in applying the concepts into novel questions of real-life applications. That is why I encourage deep learning without an effort.
Although we have a very limited control in the lives of the students, we can provide the needed support to handle the stressful times. I believe that teachers are the best people (apart from parents) to build up the emotional resilience of the students and activate their higher levels of cognition skills.
Tip:
The following link provides an overview of exams as a source of stress.