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"Abolish Coursework?"

What are people's views on this? I can't quite decide whether it's a good idea or not.

Coursework provides people who tend to panic in exams the chance of getting a decent grade, but is that necessarily a good thing? With all of education being finally assesed by exams is giving people a way out a good idea?

Sooooo... anyone?

I cba to put loads of effort into coursework.
No revision and I can get an easy A on exams (biology and physics aside).
Any douche can spend hours a day on copiously copying someone else's coursework with the odd adaptation. Not really a test of ability.

But you can learn everything you need to know the night before an exam and forget it 24 hours later and end up with an A.

That doesn't show you're proficient in a subject at all.
And if they got rid of exams, they'd have to change the way a subject is taught so that people don't cheat.

munn wrote:
> Well, uif you abolished the exams, you'd make teh coursework harder
> to compensate, obviously.

Doesn't change the fact that crappy people can a) cheat b) get teachers "help" (ie. cheat more subtley).

it was two pieces for us in ICT

RastaBillySkank wrote:
> munn wrote:
>
> Thus exams aren't a good representation of how good someone is at a
> subject.
>
> Meh, is it any better than coursework where really crappy people can
> get really good grades?

Well, uif you abolished the exams, you'd make teh coursework harder to compensate, obviously.

Tagline wrote:
> ICT and business studies took us ages to do them

ICT's not just one piece of coursework is it? The course our school did wasn't at least. Business Studies, fair point.

RastaBillySkank wrote:
> Chr1s wrote:
> It probably should be worth a higher percentage of the overall grade
> though. Exams last a couple of hours and are worth as much, if not
> more than a piece of coursework that took months to complete.
>
> Bollards. At GCSE level at least, apart from Geography there is
> no single piece of coursework that takes months to complete.


ICT and business studies took us ages to do them

munn wrote:

> Thus exams aren't a good representation of how good someone is at a
> subject.

Meh, is it any better than coursework where really crappy people can get really good grades?

Chr1s wrote:
> It probably should be worth a higher percentage of the overall grade
> though. Exams last a couple of hours and are worth as much, if not
> more than a piece of coursework that took months to complete.

Bollards. At GCSE level at least, apart from Geography there is no single piece of coursework that takes months to complete. Obviously though it's different at higher levels, but still. Plus you can cheat in coursework really easily. And you can "get help" from your teachers who can't outrightly give you the answers but always do in a roundabout way (talking about sciences). Then there's all the guidance you get with essay's in English and History. You even get model answers and essay frames in some schools.

Well, in Scotland we've very few subjects where a large percentage of the grade is coursework.

That's good for me though.
I don't work in classes and get A's.

But put it this way.

One of my best mates was by far teh best at English last year.
He got 85%+ in every close reading, critical essay and the like, whereas I passed, marginally, sometimes, if I handed in the work, that is.

None of the English grade depends on coursework here though.

I studied for 3 or 4 hours before the exam.

I got an A.
My mate got a D.

Thus exams aren't a good representation of how good someone is at a subject.