Monday 7 October 2013

WRITTEN EXAMS (2)

Back in June, I told you how in contrast to Brits, Danes like oral exams. The written ones are also pretty different as well, as I found out today. They are having mock exams at my school this week, and the Danish maths paper was this afternoon.

First of all, at 4 hours, it was longer than the average British exam, which is usually three hours max, even when I was at university. Secondly, the students could - and nearly all did - use a computer to write their answers. Thirdly, although the school's internet access was shut down, that was not in order to deny pupils the opportunity to consult outside sources, but to stop collaborative cheating. Pupils are allowed to take into the exam pretty much anything that they have used in class; textbooks, completed questions, notes, formulae, mathematical computer programmes, whatever. Whether it all helps is of course a moot point, but it is up to them what they use.

All of which contrasts with the English maths exam which they will be taking on Wednesday. There they are allowed nothing more than a pen, a pocket calculator and some geometrical instruments. It will be interesting to see which one they do better in.

Walter Blotscher
Posted by Walter Blotscher at 22:03

3 comments:

  1. Michael7 October 2013 at 23:22

    You imply a prediction that they will do worse in the English version. But the Danish version may lead to more practical skills.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Walter Blotscher8 October 2013 at 09:09

    Hi Michael,

    They all say that the English method is more difficult, and I think that that is true, though mainly because they are not used to this method. On the question of practical skills, I think that there are pros and cons. On the one hand, real life suggests that you would have access to books and other documents when you are trying to work things out. On the other, you are also forced in many circumstances to make decisions based on imperfect information (i.e. on the basis of your own memory and knowledge alone). Doing both types of exam is in my view a good approach, particularly since they are dealing with the same problems.

    Regards,

    Walter

    ReplyDelete
  3. Michael8 October 2013 at 16:36

    I can take solace from the view that many decisons in life are made on the basis of my own memory and knowledge. It explains why most of my decisonns in retrospect were wrong.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)