So, back to exams at the end of the 2 year course rather than the modular approach. What do you think? For me a great move.

Aren't you a little long in the tooth to be sitting 'A' levels?

I prefer the current system of having exams every six months, so I don't have to remember what I learnt about Talcott Parsons two years ago.

How would it work for creative subjects? and what about coursework?

You're never too old to learn! There is more to life than fish you know.

...unless you're a seal.

I would have thought that there was a place for a mix of approaches, depending on subject.

For instance, in art, there's room for course work and an exam in history.

Or perhaps, going further, other subjects could/should be something like 50/50, on the grounds that some people can easily swot up for an exam, even if they've apparently done little work over the period of the course, while exam performance is also open to lots of external factors that can be detrimental, from having a period to family issues to all sorts of things.

Sex?

I'd draw a distinction between subjects like art, and pure academic subjects. Your art would be produced during your course, not at the end, but it would indisputably be yours (unless you got your mate to come and throw a few quick brush strokes at your canvas while the lecturer/tutor was at the toilet).

The problem with course work is everybody knows that everybody would be tempted to a path of least effort, and from internet cut'n'pasting to plagiarism to wholesale cheating by buying answers, and it must be the case that you're rarely marking work which is the work, the whole work and nothing but the work of the individual student. This can only get worse as technology gets better, and there is already stiff online competition to "assist" students in ways which are varying distances short of or over the line. (As well as of course many cons, where the unsuspecting buy dummy work which is in fact garbage).

While I would accept that everyone is different in their capacity to swot up for an exam, I think that applies only to revision. In the context of a decent university course, there is no substitute for assimilating and understanding the numerous components of your course, something in which regular explanation and assistance from tutors is essential. If you didn't attend that part of the course, then you simply don't know it, and no amount of swotting up can teach you things which require explanation.

Of course no system is perfect, and I'd accept that there will always be intelligent and hardworking students who for unusual reasons just can't cope well with the situation of an exam, and if there are ways to offer some help or solution for them then those could be explored, but for the substantial majority I would say that exams, where there is no substitute for bringing your knowledge in your head, are a better and more trustworthy indicator than course work. If there was a way to verify that all course work was genuinely the individual's own effort, then I'd support that as the better method, but I don't see that there is.

1. That would be art history, not art. All study in art based subjects of existing artists/designers/illustrators is used for inspiration and reference, not just regurgitation of facts and inferences on history of art, like an art history exam would most likely entail.


2. in A levels? Are you kidding? General studies maybe.