Opening up #learning: Google in the exam room

Learning is changing, but are schools systems and testing methods keeping pace with these changes? Should they? In a recent BBC TV interview, the head of the examination and qualifications organisation OCR, Mark Dawe, argued that exams and other testing should change to accommodate the new ways of learning that are emerging. He suggested that we should now allow internet access into the exam room, because 'it reflected the way pupils learned and how they would work in the future.'  His ideas were immediately shot down by Chris McGovern ,representing the Campaign for Real Education, who remarked that this proposal was tantamount to dumbing down education. 'We have to test what children are carrying in their heads,' he said.

Dawe of course disagrees with this conclusion, preferring a more progressive approach to testing. He suggests that Google and Internet enabled devices in the exam room is inevitable. He argued that 'when we are asking a question and we know there is access to the Internet, we could ask a different question - it's about the interpretation, the discussion.' This is a fundamental challenge to the way examinations are conducted, and a positive nod in the direction of the new ways of technology enabled learning that some educators find entirely problematic.

What are your views on this debate? Do you think children should be able to access the Internet during their exams? Or should we be cautious and continue to maintain the status quo? If Internet access is made available during exams, will the questions need to change? If so, what will be the benefits and the challenges? The comments box below awaits your views.

Photo by Alejandro Caicedo on Wikimedia Commons


Opening up learning: Google in the exam room by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.