Should Coursework Be Substituted with Exams?

Posted by dominicbrian23 on July 29th, 2018

Coursework and exams both serve as ways of evaluating student performance and knowledge in a particular field. Some learning institutions prefer to make their students go through exams, while others prefer to make the students complete coursework and finish them on time.  However, most of the institutions require the students to complete coursework and at the same time take exams.

Either way, the question remains, which one of the two is a more efficient way to evaluate student performance and knowledge? Currently, exams are the most widely used way to evaluate students even though there has been discussion on whether they should be replaced entirely with coursework. This article attempts to answer this very question.

Unlike exams, a coursework involves the student going through several phases of learning and testing. For instance, it may involve writing essays, which further requires research, it also involves experimentation and practice of various sorts in order to complete objectives in a timely manner. On the other hand, exams simply test the student once, giving them time to prepare according to their own will before the exam is held on a particular day. Whatever happens on that day, decides the fate of the students. Due to that, many have rightly criticized exams for this particular reason and have praised coursework for the broader range and steps of learning it involves. Indeed, even if students are not in a position to complete the coursework by themselves, they can always buy coursework help and get reliable guidance on how they are supposed to complete the coursework.

Exams do have some plus points though. They give the students a very strong incentive to study and demand hard work, offering good results in return. Nevertheless, many have also criticized this aspect of exams, saying they only make students store a large amount of information in their heads for a very short period of time. Exams still do reinforce helpful, real-life learning skills and involve many other concepts like managing time, stress and so on. But then again, so does coursework, but in a less stressful manner. Exams are surely more challenging, but coursework demands more work for a longer period.

In coursework, just as is the case in essay writing, students are allowed to conduct research and use various resources in order to get the right information to finish their work. Students learn to manage their time by creating a timetable and working on their deadlines to finish their work before the time ends. Coursework demands the best out of students as it not only makes them want to learn something to pass like in an exam but actually makes them set targets, achieve them, over a longer course of time, as a result of which the students actually remember what they learn. Moreover, there are even students who have been able to get help when they asked someone to write my essay cheap. That would never happen in an exam since the students are totally on their own when they are sitting for their exams.

Conducting research, experiments and writing essays can help one understand a certain topic by the core rather than just remembering for a short amount of time to pass the exam, then forget as they prepare for the next one. In short, coursework offers an experience that is less stressful and focuses more on practical learning, which is why if exams were to get replaced by coursework, it would not be so bad of a replacement. In fact, it would be a beneficial one, and revamp the way we analyze student knowledge in today’s date.