Many people believe that formal "pen and paper" examinations are not the best method of assessing educational achievement.

Many people believe that formal "pen and paper" examinations are not the best method of assessing educational achievement. To What Extent Do you Agree or Disagree?

It is argued by many that "pen and paper" tests are not considered to be the best form of examination to measure academic performance of students. While I believe that formal tests are good way to size up the student’s performance at school, I  further believe that  the quality and quantity of outputs presented  for every tasks learned at school should also be considered.

To begin with, formal "pen and paper" tests can measure the student's cognitive ability wherein the brain's capacity to hold information is tested through memorization of what was learned, relay of information through summarizing of ideas from the lessons gand critical thinking ability through the process of elimination of the wrong answers from the choices given such as in  the multiple choice questions. These are all geared towards measuring how much knowledge was absorbed by the student.

However, there are certain cases wherein the academic performance of a student is measured thoroughly such as having outputs in terms of projects, researches, experiments or inventions to name a few. In this case, not only the student's cognitive ability is measured but traits like creativity, critical thinking ability, reasoning, patience and perseverance are tested. For instance, doing a research requires a skill for good reasoning while designing requires creativity. Successful inventions and experiments on the other hand have required a skill on perseverance and patience. The number of outputs also determines the speed of performance of the student, testing his physical ability.

In conclusion, "pen and paper" tests have their own merits but having tangible outputs as a form of assessment strengthens the idea of good way to measure academic achievement.