New tech could remove exams, and be more accurate

Long read, TL;DR at bottom. [quote]Major exams are the bane of many a student’s life. They represent a one-off chance to scribble months or years of learning onto paper, and can make or break future career prospects. The trouble is that taking an exam at a time rigidly set by the academic calendar has never been an ideal way to determine competence – they may come at the right time for some lucky students, but not for many others. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be that way. As teaching begins to move online, we no longer need to wait until the end of a course to perform assessments. Instead, [b]computer software can assess understanding during the learning process itself by analysing a student’s every mouse click and keystroke.[/b] So could we finally be able to get rid of the dreaded final exam? A better option is a system that allows students to advance at their own pace, as and when they have mastered the material, says Julia Freeland an education researcher at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation in San Mateo, California. This is called competency-based learning, and it requires tailoring the educational programme in a different way for each student. This is clearly something that teachers in a busy classroom may struggle to do. [b]If course material is offered online, though, with the student’s input analysed automatically by computer software, students can be assessed individually – even to the point that the software can identify when a given student is likely to perform to their full potential on an exam.[/b] Competency-based learning software is now being used both in high schools and in colleges across the US, says Freeland. [b]The Virtual Learning Academy Charter School in the state of New Hampshire is one prominent high school example. Western Governors University, an online institution based in Salt Lake City, Utah, introduced competency-based learning software in 2012. Arizona State University made a similar move in 2011. [/b] The idea behind the software is relatively straightforward. It takes information about the student’s activity on a course website – the pages they have visited and whether the student has verified that they have read a passage of text or watched a video, for instance – and combines it with data on the student’s performance on informal tests and quizzes to establish in real time how well the student understands a concept. When that understanding reaches a predetermined level, the student is challenged with new concepts, or offered the opportunity to take a formal exam. Since this form of competency-based learning approach was introduced in some classes at Arizona State University, pass rates have reportedly increased. And Philip Regier, the dean of the university’s online arm, says there are now plans for doing “an entire degree adaptively”.[/quote] TL;DR: Making the whole course digital would enable teachers to accurately measure competency, and remove simple "regurgitation" at tests. Essentially, homework and quizzes are the core of your grade. I think this is great, I don't mind exams much, but having taken two of them yesterday, I can say I do get a little bit jittery before them, just one error has far more effect on your grade than a perfectly done piece of homework.