It’s 2025 and assessment by final exam lies bleeding and lifeless on the classroom floor. It is rushed to A&E where a group of anxious academics gather to await news.
A surgeon, in bloodstained scrubs with battered old stethoscope, emerges to inform a solemn looking EdTech audience (for it is they) that the exam is dead. The surgeon explains that the EdTech people and Assessment teams had done everything they could to resuscitate the exam but the haemorrhaging was too extensive.
A pathologist will deliver the final cause of death but the crime team suspect ‘death by a thousand cuts’ citing complications of 'supercomplexity'. (Some of these complications are referenced below, others will be presented during the Gasta).
2019. Technology – now so sophisticated that wearable technology is impossible to detect in an exam environment.
2022. The technology behind Google glasses is used in the development of ‘GooGles’ - contact lenses that allow anyone in need of help to access offsite experts.
2023. Online proctoring – once seen as an innovative technology to authenticate and validate online learners at scale – is doomed following a ruling by the European Court of Justice based on the evidence of the European Security Commissioner who identifies huge issues with the privacy and security of collated data arising from a European project and compared the proctoring process to the type of surveillance 'reserved for criminals’.
2024. Where exams had predominantly required memorization of facts academics now agreed on new models of authentic assessment that demonstrated a learner’s ability to evaluate, synthesize and create both as an individual and as a team member.
2025. “#The Exam is dead! Long live lifelong learning!” starts trending on Twitter.
Topics: Global challenges in Higher & Further Education , Topics: Assessment and feedback in a digital age
