Flipping off Exams

Dan Reynolds

April 2021

When final exams were cancelled last school year for many programs (IBDP, A Levels, etc.), I was hoping a silver lining of the pandemic would be to rethink this form of final assessment and come up with alternatives that are more suited to the times we live in. Picture a big sigh of exasperation when I noticed that indeed, exams will go ahead for most programs this year. 

Soon after hearing that exams were a go I was on LinkedIn and saw there was a forum about exams. I observed people locked in an epic struggle of comments in support of, or disdain for, exams. I put forth, as I did above, that we need to find alternatives that are more suited to 21st century learning and suddenly one of my former students who is now a teacher chimed in and said, “I agree, what do you suggest?” I told him to watch this space and thus this article was born. Thanks for the push Simon. It made me think more deeply about the issue and offer up at least an alternative, as imperfect as it may be. It is important to note early on however that this is simply an alternative and my real preference is for ongoing assessment and no high stakes final exams at all.

If you couldn’t tell by the intro or the title of this article, saying I am not a big fan of exams is an understatement. My reasons are simple and I decided to work backwards although it may make more sense for some of you to read from the bottom up. Either way it's all about survival and we don’t need exams for that.

• Most adults need a job, which hopefully becomes a fulfilling career, to survive.
• Our level of education or achievement in school often has a strong influence on what kind of job we get.
• Grades are the basis for academic achievement and a major determining factor of whether a large number of people go to college/university or join the workforce directly. 
• Exams are still the predominant way schools arrive at final grades for older students.
• We need a way to measure learning progress so we use grades.
• Schools are a place of learning and a primary function of schools is to help young people get ready for adult life.
• Learning is fundamental to survival.

Hold the phone! If education is meant to prepare young people for adult life and entering the workforce, and what kind of job most people will ultimately do is influenced by our educational success, which is determined by exam scores, the world is way out of whack. When in the workplace would we put a group of people striving towards the same goal in a room and not allow them to collaborate or use any and all resources available to them?

Now you are probably thinking, yes exams in their present form are outdated and don’t fit the current work world but we need them because they are fair and the best way to determine what students have learned. We don’t really have any choice or alternative. Well that my friends is where you would be wrong. 

Flipped Learning

For those unfamiliar with flipped learning here it is in a nutshell. Flipped learning has students interact with new material at home instead of the traditional approach to homework which is reinforcing knowledge and or skills. This opens up class time for students to engage with the new material instead of spending a significant portion of the lesson listening to the teacher present new material. 

What if we were to take this concept and apply it to exams? And what if we were to add what in my day we called open book tests, although what I am about to suggest takes that old idea to the next level.

Flipping Exams and Allowing Students to Use All Resources Available to Them

How do we take the flipped learning model and apply it to exams if we feel exams are still a necessary evil? What do open book tests look like in the 2020s?

I will speak through the lens of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) since that is what I am most familiar with but I assume this is a one size fits all approach for all final exam based programs.

In the IBDP six subjects typically have two or three exams and take place over a three week period. Depending on the school, students finish a week or two before the exams start to have a chance to prepare. 

In the flipped exam model students would have a month to complete exams which is similar to  the current amount of lost instruction time. There would be one “exam” per subject which would encompass all of the skills, content and knowledge of the current multiple papers. There would be mental health days between exams to allow students to recharge.

Students would get all of the questions and success criteria three days ahead of time. They could research, collaborate and bring their notes, solutions and any resources they think they might need to the exam. The exam itself would contain the same problems as those presented three days earlier and students could use all of their pre-prepared notes and resources, including their computer with internet access during the exam to answer the questions. Since significant time was already given for collaboration, students would not be able to collaborate on the day to allow them to focus. However, they could move freely in and out of the exam room and would not be monitored outside of the exam room. The exam itself would have ample time to complete the problems which mirrors real life in most cases. 

This approach is much in line with a famous quote from Einstein, “If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and 1 minute resolving it.” (NBC) In much the same way, this model allows students to spend the majority of their time thinking about the questions, not sitting in a room coming up with solutions to problems they may have never seen before.

Justifiable Concerns With This Method

The most obvious concern for this model would be that students could pay someone else to completely create the answers for them prior to coming into the exam room. They could sit and write verbatim things they put no effort into creating making it unfair. While I admit this is a possibility, it would be for an extremely small minority and the cost for quality answers in three days would be substantial. I know this is a pessimistic view but students who take this approach are likely getting into university anyway since there is always a school, even at what is considered the elite level, for someone who can pay for it. (The Guardian) Unfair yes but unfortunately a fact of life. 

Would The IBO Ever Go For This?

Just over a year ago (May 2020) the Director General for the IBO at the time gave an interview where she stated that there is a need to shift away from focusing too strongly on exams at the end of students’ learning. She also said that, “This heavy-duty summative experience does not reflect the real world anymore. It’s not where the world is going." (tes)

It seems that the IB has a vision for eliminating exams in their current form and while I agree with Dr. Kumari that ongoing assessment is the real answer, I am not sure the world is ready to give up exams entirely so I have offered up a midway alternative.

So to my colleagues at the IBO, if you are the open minded, risk takers we so often talk about in the IB Learner Profile, why not flip off exams and give this a try? Unless of course you are ready to abolish them altogether? 

Sources 

Either directly or indirectly quoted and some that just helped inform this article and are definitely worth a read.

Purpose of Assessment

Edutopia

Education Reform

Purpose of Final Exams

Connected Principals

Flipped Classroom

Edutopia

Schoology

EdTech

Defining Problems (Einstein)

NBC News

IBO Director General

Tes

University Preference For The Wealthy

The Guardian