Pen and paper

I can recall with mixed emotions the last exams I wrote before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although I’m convinced any memory that predates COVID must be better than the past year and a half of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, I can say with confidence that this is one memory I do not associate with the ‘better days’ we so desperately long to return to.

Four exams over the course of three days—two on the same day, and one the following morning. Living off of Clif Bars and kombucha, I sat in the Hart House Library on four hours of sleep, rigorously attempting to look over the notes I had taken for my Art History class. As I sat there trying to memorize the titles, dates, artists, and materials of over 200 pieces of art (knowing I would be tested on just six of them), I questioned my right to exist in the academic world; I had never felt so unworthy of calling myself a UofT student.

I entered the exam room the next morning feeling completely defeated and incompetent. With only a few minutes to write down as much information as I could recall about each work, it felt as though my life depended on the pen in my hand, and it simply could not write fast enough. 

The anxiety-inducing nature of timed exams is not an unfamiliar concept to post-secondary students. My story is one that thousands of others have experienced under those same overwhelming conditions. The standardized method of academic testing has been common in Western education culture since the nineteenth century, and students’ performance on these tests are pivotal determiners of their academic success. But, despite the long tradition of these timed, in-person exams, extraordinary circumstances brought on by the ongoing pandemic have forced institutions to re-evaluate their testing format. 

As in-person classes shifted to online learning, so too did methods of standardized testing. As an English and Art History major, the bulk of my exams became open-book or take-home style. Although I have many lamentations about online school, this was one aspect of the digital age of learning that I embraced as a positive change. For the first time during my undergraduate degree, I allowed myself to engage with the course material in lectures as opposed to focusing my attention on taking detailed notes. I was able to complete the readings at a pace that felt more comfortable to me and to absorb the information more thoroughly. For the first time, I felt like I was actually learning the material being taught, not simply memorizing it in preparation for the final exam. It was an incredibly liberating feeling during a time of such grueling isolation. It’s safe to say that I, along with many other students, have adjusted to the more lenient style of open-book testing over the past year, so it is no wonder that the thought of returning to in-person learning is a bit daunting. 

While mulling over my own anxiety about the return to in-person exams, I found myself trying to identify the roots of why we have standardized testing in the first place. After some research, I found one explanation that stood out to me. As Maryellen Weimer, PhD puts it, standardized testing exists “to assess the degree to which the students have mastered the content and skills of the course.” But this begs the question: is it valid to determine a student’s academic merit and comprehension of the course material based on their ability to memorize 200-plus pieces of art in one night, or on their capacity to write an A-level essay in one hour? Certainly, we would not judge a well renowned author on their ability to do so. Why, then, would we place these limitations on students? 

This isn’t to say there is no place for timed exams in the academic world. Vanessa Marshall, a first-year student at Carleton University, says that she prefers in-person exams for her particular program (Industrial Design) because they provide a proper setting to focus. Marshall feels open-book exams provide her with a false sense of comfort and that she performs better during closed-book exams, especially with multiple choice style questions. However, when speaking with Trishla Parekh, a fourth-year English major at UofT, the outlook on in-person exams shifted. Parekh expressed concerns specifically about writing timed essays on exams, as open-book style exams have allowed her to take her time and use available notes and sources, functioning more like a “timed assignment” than an exam. With these contrasting opinions in mind, I think open-book exams may be more appealing to arts and humanities students, and perhaps testing approaches should be reconsidered according to individual programs as schools reopen in the fall. 

From my perspective, timed exams assess speed and your ability to regurgitate memorized facts. Although there are undoubtedly situations when speed is necessary in life, your skills when writing an essay or identifying a passage from a novel you read three months ago should not be one of them. As an arts student who has experienced both methods of exam formatting, I will say that timed exams tend to shift my focus to fear of failure, overthrowing my ability to learn. I obsess over the grade-generating factors of exams as opposed to the educational component, and if you asked me to recite the details of any one of those 200 art pieces I memorized two years ago, well, I could not do it. 

If the pandemic has taught us anything about the world of academia, it’s that there are other ways of doing things. Just as online learning itself can serve as a good alternative to in-person learning, there are alternative testing methods that can foster more efficient and inclusive learning specific to each program, helping to reduce anxiety levels and improve students’ mental health during exam season.

In the interest of twenty-first century progress, perhaps our methods of standardized testing also need to “grow as a tree through the ages,” as UofT’s motto so aptly puts it.