Unicorm a dit :

my country's curriculum is absolute shit compared to the rest of the world and yet our teachers manage to teach us everything we need to know with proper intervals for students to review

i, myself, am one of those who don't study and only listen to the teachers' lectures yet i manage to get decent scores on my exams because the teachers' ways of teaching are effective to both student and teacher

I'm also one of those people. I never revise only listen in class.

I wouldn't say all of my past teacher's were effective though.

The only thing I don't like about exams are end of the year exams.
Where I live, the end of the year exams matter more than anything, and you can get pretty bad grades on everything else, then barely get a passing grade on the end of the year exam, and still get to go on to the next grade. It's stupid, blugh.

walkin into an exam all like


(gif)

exams are pretty practical and less time-consuming to identify the student's position aside the standards, however it is precisely where the system may fail; examinations are not personalized to students under time constraints according to their strengths.

while yes, if a student is prepared to walk into an exam with no issue, they deserve what they've earned. it is a growing issue with students who wished they could have done better simply for being pressured to perform on the day (see gif). it's unfortunate to see students defined for a mark as the yearlong curriculum would more accurately represent the nature of the student.

exams can also limit the learning environment and methods because of time. i've had a handful of teachers who would teach by the test, and they were the fuckin worst

Exams have always been easy for me, I'm a fast learner, good at memorizing, and never had any problems with them. That being said, I think they're a pretty good way of knowing how much content a student actually knows. Projects, like essays, show more cognitive skill, which is more personalized based on a student's skill level. A student is required to learn a certain curriculum for the year, which is where essays come in. If the student has completely learned all of the material for the year and is able to easily remember it, they would certainly get an A on the test.

Projects, as I said before, show more personal skill. Instead of focusing on the content, it also focuses on how hard a student is willing to work, how good they are at collecting/analyzing data, their comprehension skills, etc.

Both are equally important. My current high school (uses a non-traditional method of teaching) has students learn the content at their own pace. Every student takes their exams at different times based on how confident they are in the subject, and no students are rushed into anything, provided they are finishing the content at a pace that will have them finished by the end of the year. It also provides optional content for students to learn and test themselves on, if they wish to get higher grades than simply passing grade. This content is not mandatory, and only for students who feel like they would like to do it. Nobody is hurried at a pace they do not feel comfortable learning at, and therefore find it easier to learn the material (provided they actually want to try to learn, many idiots at my school just dont even try)

Then at the end of the school year we take another test that tests our knowledge of content for the entiire year. If you fail the test you do not get held back because of it, you only get held back if you have not finished all your smaller content tests for the year. The end of the year test is just to prepare you for the ACTs which we take in 11th or 12th (I forget)

Projects are different, however. We get around six projects per class each year, and they focus on cognitive skill levels. We are graded on how well we have performed in each category (example categories are Data analysis, Technology, Inquiry process) Students are expected to improve or at least maintain their scores in each of the categories over the different projects. For example one project might focus on Data analysis, Contextualizing, and Writing, and another project in the same subject would focus on Contextualizing, Technology, and Precision accuracy. If I scored a 5 in contextualizing on the first project (the grading scale goes from 3.5-6) then in the second I would be expected to score a 5, 5.5, or a 6 in the same category, otherwise I would be requested to redo the project. (because if I had scored lower, that means I would not have done the best I could)

My school focuses on developing the cognitive skills (projects) instead of the content learning (exams) (the content is required by the state)

tl;dr i got a bit off track and started explaining my school's learning system which is different from traditional school methods

edit: if anyone would like, I can post screenshots of the learning program we use

I believe did a great topic :)