While secondary students across Simcoe County are emerging from their first crack at exams and assessments this week in more than two years due to the pandemic, some of those assessments may look a little different from the formal exams their parents’ generations wrote.
At both the Simcoe County District School Board (SCDSB) and the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board (SMCDSB), secondary students are given various different forms of assessment depending on course material, which may include exams, portfolio submissions or essays.
Where the two boards differ as of this year is the public board no longer plans for formal exam days through their school calendars, while the Catholic board still has formal exam/assessments built into their school calendars, which ran from Jan. 26 to Feb. 1, and will run again from June 23 to 29.
“People remember what it was like when they were in high school. Things have changed monumentally in education and in the workforce. We need to be changing and evolving as well. We can’t stay stagnant,” said Dawn Stephens, associate director of education with the SCDSB.
Starting in 2010, the Ministry of Education changed the curriculum, called Growing Success, which changed the way school boards were able to evaluate students. Under that policy, school boards were empowered to make their own decisions on how best to evaluate student success, with the only stipulation from the province being that 70 per cent of evaluations come from coursework throughout the school year, while 30 per cent comes from a final evaluation that could be an exam, but could also come in other forms such as essays, portfolios submissions or performance evaluations.
In the years since, many school boards across Ontario have gravitated away from formal exam periods due to changing advice on whether they are the best form of evaluation of student learning.
Stephens says the public board has been looking at the issue since 2010 when the ministry policy came out. She says the first time the board officially removed the structured exam days from the school calendar was in 2020 due to the pandemic when exams were put on hold.
“We’d been looking at it for a long time, and then COVID happened. Rather than flipping everything back to exactly how we did it before, now was our chance to make a significant change in structure,” she said.
“That’s really what has changed – the structure of when those exams are,” said Stephens. “If a teacher wants to have an exam and that’s what they feel is the best method of determining the learning... they can still have an exam and many of them do.”
Stephens says one of the biggest flaws of formal exam days is following the writing of an exam, students wouldn’t see the results aside from a grade, and wouldn’t have an opportunity to see where they could improve.
“The exam would now occur during instructional time and then we have three days where students receive feedback, and they have an opportunity to improve through that feedback,” she said.
Any time there is change, Stephens says the board will typically receive some feedback and questions, and this specific change was no exception.
“Students are still preparing for university and are working on study skills... so when students do attend a post-secondary destination whether it be an apprenticeship program or a university (course), they have the skills to be successful. We don’t have to mimic a post-secondary institution,” she said.
Scot Gorecki, superintendent of student engagement and athletics at the SMCDSB, says that while the Catholic board does have formal exam days built into their school calendar, their board also provides teachers and principals with some leeway to determine the best type of assessment for their course material.
“We might change them to ‘assessment days.’ When you say the word ‘exam,’ it denotes something in someone’s head and I don’t know if that’s reflective of what’s going on on those days currently,” he said. “The decision is largely with the teachers because they’re the ones that know the subject matter best.”
Gorecki says many school boards have shifted to alternate methods of assessment over the past decade due to changing advice from education experts, and changing post-secondary and workforce requirements. He says the pandemic has also shifted mindsets about formal exams.
“It’s constantly under review and revision at a teacher, school and board level,” he said. “The goal of assessment is to improve student learning and take a metric/measure of their achievement. Anything we (change) would be evidence-informed.”
Michael Hoechsmann is chair of the education program at Lakehead University in Orillia. The campus, like many university campuses across Ontario, have formal exam periods for certain courses.
“Exams are an effective way to do assessment if the conditions are right and make sense with the needs and wants of a particular course,” said Hoechsmann. “On an individual level, it can typically be used to sort us into those of high achievement, medium or low achievement. They’re most effective in content-driven courses where there are a lot of facts and ideas that one has to assimilate.”
“Where they’re not so effective is in courses where knowledge is more networked – where ideas have to flow based on something more process-oriented,” he said.
Hoechsmann notes that how exams are delivered can also be a determining factor in how well they can measure learning.
“If there’s a lot of pressure, or there’s a lot at stake... with preparation comes worry,” he said. “Exams can be a productive part of the learning process, but they can also be very static and a bit institutional.”
“They might not be the most enlightened way of assessing people,” he added.
At Georgian College, Samantha Sullivan Sauer and Tracy Mitchell-Ashley both work as faculty developers at the college’s Centre for Teaching and Learning, both working with course instructors at the college level to determine the best assessment strategies for their courses. Sullivan Sauer works with instructors in the sciences and engineering, while Mitchell-Ashley works in the communications field.
They both say different forms of assessment are also encouraged at Georgian which are most in line with current workforce conditions.
“We should be offering authentic assessments to what our fields look like,” said Mitchell-Ashley. “Always assigning an exam because an exam is how we were assessed in the past or because it’s ‘the way it’s done’ isn’t necessarily the greatest approach.”
“Exams and tests have their purpose and have their places,” said Sullivan Sauer. “It varies from course to course. We want to prepare our students for their careers, so the assessment methods need to match what’s expected in that.”
Sullivan Sauer says she has experience teaching in both environments – where formal exam periods take place, or when formal exam periods aren’t taking place but exams are done during regular class time.
“I don’t necessarily see a big difference whether it’s done during regular class time or during a (formal) exam time. The preparation is still the same,” she said, noting that Georgian provides support for students who may struggle with test taking overall.
“Test anxiety – which is real – is going to manifest regardless of whether different parameters exist around testing,” said Mitchell-Ashley.
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