Zawaya

Changing evaluation methods to fight cheating in exams

By: Driss Kassouri

The theory of total quality management in education focuses on the idea that students are not the main product and target of the educational process; it’s rather teaching them knowledge, skills and ethical and aesthetic values that is the purpose of the whole process. To achieve this, a few rules were established to evaluate and review the educational process through scientific procedures and methods, in order to ensure its quality and identify the weaknesses and strengths of its outputs and results. The regulations related to behavioral sanctions and controls associated with cheating cases are among the most important methods adopted to improve results.

However, if the accurate, comprehensive and rigorous activation of fraud combating methods should become a normal practice in school life, then every individual in the educational system would be aware of the importance of those methods, and commit to them, in order to preserve credibility and equal opportunities. The effective elimination of fraud, particularly in the baccalaureate exams, relies on planning an effective strategy to develop and adopt an evaluation method that tests the depth and strength of the students’ intelligence, instead of mere achievement tests that measure the amount of information acquired by them, and which is adopted for most subjects and disciplines despite their differences. In actuality, achievement tests are considered the weakest tool to measure targets, given the lack of trust in them, and how they encourage resorting to cheating.

The awareness of students and their expectations regarding evaluation methods have a significant impact on their learning patterns, and the way they engage in exams; that even determines the level of their willingness to interact effectively with the educational curriculum and courses in the classroom. The dilemma aggravates when the students are given simple, superficial and well-worn questions, within a single context or section, and which are almost recurrent in each exam every year in order to increase the chances of success and avoid the reactions of students, and even out of fear of a burning summer.

The pattern of exams’ texts and questions, how students predict them, the nepotism of administrations and teachers through private tutoring sessions, the inflation of classroom grades, and the facilitation of regional examinations, are all factors that help students determine their preparation methods for the exam, and the way they will deal with it, as all efforts of positive interaction with the educational operations within the classroom are transferred to the exam day, where cheating emerges as a decisive weapon to achieve goals, with the blessings of parents in many cases.

Therefore, the number of active and intelligent students who follow the path of deep education is decreasing; these are students who rely on their intelligence and awareness, by capturing ideas, analyzing issues, identifying relations, linking concepts, and forming proper conclusions in order to let education have a meaning in their lives and for them to achieve self-esteem.

The students’ understanding of evaluation methods plays a major role in their choice for either an intelligent academic pattern, or a fraud behavior to secure their chances for a fake success, since the test methods facilitate that given their negative impact on students.

However, all forms of objective tests and essays require going beyond evaluations in one subject, by measuring the different types of content, and measuring performance in terms of knowledge, skills and values.

Keeping away from artificial learning methods, and adopting deep methods that respect all effective evaluation means, can help achieve the highest knowledge goals. That is because students who are motivated to study do not allow negative evaluation methods to drag them into the quagmires of dishonorable academic behaviors that are detrimental to them and to the development of society.

Stimulating and enriching intelligence, achievement, and curiosity; and using several ways to enhance innovative behaviors among students, are all factors that have a strong and direct impact on rebuilding the psychology of students, and undermining cheating practices in the long run.

Other factors that might accelerate the pace of making the suggested strategy successful are: the rehabilitation of the teaching profession and of the role of culture in society, the reconstruction of successful community-based models, and the successive connection of graduates to jobs. In parallel, many other systemic issues should be invoked in this context, namely:

- Eradicating the current uncertainties about the credibility of the classroom tests and the validity of the regional exams.

- Making success in the baccalaureate depend on the grade obtained in the final national exam only.

- Thinking beyond paper and pencil tests.

- Considering oral examinations.

- Guiding students based on their potential, and not on the orientations of the educational policy.

- Ensuring the suitability of content to students.

- Ensuring the suitability of content to the teaching methods.

- Ensuring the clarity of the curriculum objectives to teachers and students alike.

- Verifying the educational level of students and determining whether they need additional support programs.

- Adopting real and effective examination and control committees.

- Adopting a fair and equitable distribution of students in public and private sectors on the examination commissions.

- Updating, innovating, and not interfering in the correction system.

- Involving parents in improving the performances of their kids and addressing their behaviors.

- Developing an integrated and continuous system to follow-up absenteeism cases and deal with them in a timely manner.

- Creating work procedures and controls inside institutions.

- Criminalizing private tutoring sessions that weaken the value of classroom courses and all educational and evaluation activities within institutions.