March 2024 – Page 671 – Safir News Agency

Opinion: Open-Book Exams Can Encourage Students To 'Think', Not 'Memorise'

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The Central Board of School Examination’s (CBSE) decision to explore the idea of conducting open book exams for Classes 9 to 12 and undertake a pilot study in select schools to check its feasibility is a welcome decision. The decision has led to a lot of heated debate between the loyalists of conventional or closed-book exams, best exemplified by board exams, and its opponents, that is, those who support open-book examinations.

There are fundamental differences between the two groups. The first believes in celebrating the skill of rote memorisation, ensuring secrecy around questions and expecting uniformity in answers. The latter bats for a fear-free assessment of the learner, openness in the conduct of examinations and diversity in students’ responses.

The ‘Double-Blind’ Process In Closed-Book Exams

Exams, particularly, closed book, are regarded as being fair, objective and unbiased. It follows a double-blind process, that is, both the student and teacher are unknown and anonymous to each other. Open-book examinations come as a counter to closed-book assessments, in which the fear of forgetting and failing looms large.

Open-book exams are more about learning than assessment. It’s a 360-degree change in the way schools view learning, designing their pedagogy and recognising heterogeneity among students. It allows students to carry their books, notes, and other study material for the exam. The catch is that while students are allowed to take help from this study material, none of these would directly help the student respond to a question asked in the exam. It may require, at the most, referring to the textbook for information.

Going Beyond Textbooks

Learning is something that is not confined to textbooks, and similarly, the assessment of success should not be equated to rote memorising. Which means it’s not necessary that the more vivid and exact a replica of the textbook content the student produces, the better the learning, and consequently, the higher the scores. Typically, in a conventional classroom, questions given for homework can be answered by referring to the textbook. During exams, this skill of referencing is replaced by memorising.

Open-book exams, in turn, are precisely the opposite. They celebrate anonymity between teachers and students so that they can make a claim to be fair. Learning, rather than focusing on one correct answer, forces children to think, make connections, interpret facts differently and take positions.

Format Of Assessment Guides How Students Approach Learning

Over the years, however, assessment, and not learning, has taken precedence. Teachers and schools are also evaluated depending on how students perform in exams. Second, there is a growing emphasis on objectivity, so that there is scope for variation in marks based on an individual examiner’s fancy.

Assessment often guides learning, which means students, based on the nature of the questions asked in an exam, determine the way they approach the learning task. For example, everyone knows that the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) exam for higher education is in a multiple-choice-questions format, in which students have to select one correct answer. Students prepare themselves accordingly.

Why The No-Detention Policy Was Rolled Back

One of the myths associated with exams is that children learn because they have to appear for the exam. If there is no assessment, there will be no learning. This was one of the reasons for rolling back the non-detention policy (NDP) in 2019, which had allowed students to progress to the next class without the fear of failing exams. The NDP was introduced in the Right to Education Act, 2009.

A harsh reality is that both teachers and parents believe examinations to be a sacrosanct feature of schooling. Fear of failing is constantly harped on students, giving them little time for leisure or relaxation. Right from the time they enter school, they are threatened or made to feel scared about failing. Learning is unlikely to happen in such a fear-ridden environment.

Exams ‘Legitimise’ Success Or Failure

The biggest reason exams occupy an important place in our lives is because they legitimise both success and failure, such that students unquestioningly accept not only these decisions but also their accompaniments, such as admission-or rejection-in colleges, jobs, etc. The students, especially those who fail in exams, rarely ever object to these decisions or the lack of access or limited access to educational and health resources, etc. The biggest reason closed book examinations work is because their results seem to convey a sense of neutrality and fairness in a country that has very limited resources or seats in higher education institutions.

Closed-book exams serve a very important function of elimination, and that’s the reason they continue to exist. Strange, as it may sound, candidates from varying backgrounds and differential economic, cultural and social capital are made to sit next to each other and pretend as if the only difference between them is going to be their performance in examinations. In a society riddled with such huge differences in access to resources like food, water, housing, land, education and health, year-end, close-book exams serve a very important function: screening.

Open-Book Exam A Good Step, But It Can’t Exist In A Void

Any change in one component of education must be accompanied by changes in other components as well.

Exploring open-book examinations is a wonderful idea, but an entire ecosystem needs to be reshaped for it. Reviewing the meaning of learning, selection/orientation/training of teachers, the nature of teaching-learning resources, their use in the classroom, and even the way school inspectors view education, are only a few ways such an ecosystem can be established.

(Disha Nawani is Professor, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and Managing Editor, Contemporary Dialogue, SAGE)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Alexei Navalny: Russian Opposition Leader Who Defied, Leaving Lasting Legacy

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Alexei Navalny: Russian Opposition Leader Who Defied, Leaving Lasting Legacy

US President Joe Biden also said Putin was “responsible” for Navalny’s death. (File)

Moscow:

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was so loathed by President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin leader refused to say his name in public.
Navalny, whose death in an Arctic prison was announced on February 16, was Putin’s most prolific critic for over a decade, blasting what he called rampant corruption and refusing to back down even after being poisoned.

The lawyer-turned-politician exposed what he said were the ill-gotten gains of Putin’s inner circle in investigations that drew tens of thousands onto the streets.

He leveraged the fatigue of ordinary Russians with the country’s politics and his optimistic vision for a democratic Russia resonated around the country.

Before his near-fatal 2020 poisoning, Navalny had already been jailed, charged with fraud, held on house arrest, harassed and partially blinded by a chemical attack.

He died isolated, incarcerated in a Siberian prison colony, aged 47.

‘Brave, principled’

His treatment by the Russian authorities drew scorn from Russia’s opposition and in the West.

Nobel Peace Prize winner journalist Dmitry Muratov said Navalny had been “tortured and tormented” since his arrest in January 2021.

His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, accused Putin of ordering his killing in a final ruthless act by the former KGB agent. She vowed Putin would pay for what he had done “to our country … to my husband.”

US President Joe Biden also said Putin was “responsible” for Navalny’s death.

Navalny “was brave, he was principled, he was dedicated to building a Russia where rule of law existed and where it applied to everybody,” Biden said

‘Putin fears me’

Even in death, Navalny’s team said the Kremlin feared him as they accused Russian authorities of thwarting a public funeral.

Navalny shot to prominence in the 2010s with flashy YouTube videos exposing what he cast as systemic corruption at the heart of government.

The investigations — which uncovered palaces, mistresses and foreign bank accounts — embarrassed the Kremlin and brought crowds onto Russian streets. Riot police cracked down on protestors.

Blocked from running against Putin in 2018, he told AFP that Putin “fears me and he fears the people I represent.”

Five years earlier he won a significant chunk of votes in a Moscow mayoral election against the Kremlin backed candidate, with no access to media and a state machine working full-throttle to stop him.

In 2020 he survived a poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Videos showed him screaming in agony from the poison while on a domestic flight in August 2020.

Navalny was flown to Germany for treatment, where tests showed he had been poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

An investigation by several media outlets alleged that an FSB security service hit squad was behind the attack.

Navalny published a video that tricked one of the would-be assassins into revealing he had smeared Novichok onto Navalny’s underwear.

Asked about the allegations, Putin said that if security services had really been behind the poisoning, they would have finished the job.

‘My country’

Knowing he would face arrest, Navalny still returned to Russia in January 2021. His detention at a Moscow airport sparked large demonstrations.

Days later, Navalny’s team published another investigation into a lavish Black Sea mansion they claimed belonged to Putin. The president issued a rare denial.

Eventually sentenced to 19 years on “extremism” charges widely seen as retribution, Navalny expressed frustration with being repeatedly asked if he regretted returning to Russia.

“I have my country and I have my convictions,” he said in January. “I don’t want to give up either of them.”

‘Senseless war’

For some, Navalny was tainted by an early foray into far-right nationalism and anti-migrant statements, while many Russians backed the Kremlin’s portrayal of him as a Western puppet.

Behind bars, Navalny was helpless as the Kremlin launched an offensive against Ukraine, dismantled his organisation and locked up his allies.

In grainy videos from court hearings, he criticised the Ukraine campaign.

Russia, was “floundering in a pool of either mud or blood, with broken bones, with a poor and robbed population, and around it lie tens of thousands of people killed,” Navalny said.

He died in a harsh Arctic prison — nicknamed “Polar Wolf” — in unclear circumstances.

Navalny dedicated his final social media post before his death to his wife, Yulia, who has pledged to continue his work.

He left a message for Russian people if he was killed.

“Don’t give up. You mustn’t, you can’t give up,” he said.

“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Therefore, don’t do nothing.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)