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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus.

Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.

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I had class where the final exam was indeed a socratic style oral. It was for an ancient philosophy class (300 or 400 level - this was well beyond the 101 level) where we had studied Socrates (the dialog was on platonic forms). The exam was a 2:1 and lasted an hour if I recall correctly.

For a class of 30, this took the professor 15 hours (three hours a day over the course of a week) to have all of the students go through the exam process during exam week.

Trying to scale this up for something that can handle ~100 students becomes difficult.

Another part with this is the objective vs subjective evaluation of the student.

With the "I got a poor grade because the professor didn't like me" type issues that come up, being able to objectively point to "this is the score on the homework" and "this is the score on the final" allows that subjective grading to be removed and protects the professors from students who feel that the grade they received was influenced by external factors.

While systematizing the verification of material learned may be the wrong approach, it is where we are for a number of factors that the university doesn't have too many options (allegations of professor bias, even if unfounded, still take up a lot of time; class sizes for some classes go beyond what can be reasonably verified on a 1:1 basis)

This is exactly it.

It's not scalable, and it's way too open to professor bias.

Except for in some niche seminar classes, it's a non-starter.

The older and more educated I become from free classes online the more ridiculous our education system seems.

I pretty much know if I learned the material or not. A test is nice to confirm this for myself but the way we have put test scores above everything is just ridiculous.

It is all the symptoms of credentialism. Imagine taking the same class for free that you don't get "credit" for. It is not "cheating" then if someone else gives you the answers to things you don't know. It is just a waste of your own time. Why even bother taking the class.

Instead we have people paying tens of thousands of dollars basically to focus on test taking to get credentials that no one really cares about anyway instead of actually becoming more educated.

The irony to me is I always got good grades when I was younger and in school because I have always been a great test taker. I didn't have to "waste" much time actually learning the material. "waste" time actually benefiting from the material.

This is a very bad take.

A major component of the university experience is collaboration and networking. Dividing tasks and plugging holes in each other's understanding. Bouncing ideas off other people to test your own understanding and verify against theirs.

Any good university isn't simply about grades and there's a limit to what you can learn online. Credentials exist as a minimum filter, not as a mark of competence. One cannot be tested for an expressed numerically.

> I pretty much know if I learned the material or not.

Yes, but have you never met someone that was convinced they knew the material when they in fact didn't? They're everywhere! Accurately assessing oneself is a skill that needs to be taught for a lot of people, and an important part of it is by having people fail tests they're not capable of passing.

Testing is a very good reality check on what you think you know. Unfortunately, testing are seen and maligned as only an assessment tool, not a learning tool.

Testing is itself a form of learning, because you are asked to recall facts, concepts, and practice skills.

I can't begin to count the number of books I am partway through when left to my own motivation.

Signing up for a class with a hurdle at the end I need to jump over is exactly what I need. Free online classes are like gym memberships, but even cheaper. Most people won't stick to it.

Others have already pointed out that thesis defences and hiring interviews already use this format. I'm not an educator, but I can see some downsides:

• Unless it's recorded, you can't easily get another opinion on how to grade it, except from those at the event

• Some students will naturally be better at interview-style exams, independent of their skill in the relevant material. This is also the case with written exams, of course, but I imagine the 'skilled bullshitter' types might do better in an interview-style exam, and a nervous student might do much worse.

• I imagine it would be tougher on students who don't speak the language natively

• The 'imprecision' of a wandering organic conversation might make it harder for the student to know what to study

• Different students don't get the same exam, which might raise questions of fairness in itself, but it's worsened by that the examiner's mood is likely to change. (With written exams, an examiner can mark all students on the first question before moving on to marking the second question, to protect against this.)

• Physical appearance and deportment might skew the examiner's judgement. (This is widely believed to be an issue with juries, after all.)

• You can't hide the student's identity from the examiner, as a measure against favouritism. With written exams this can, and should, be done

I did Communication and Multimedia Design at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, and they did a lot of stuff like that: having a dialogue with your teacher or exams where you could bring a couple of handwritten notes.

The largest part of the grades came from delivering projects, where you were graded both on result and process (you would present an end-product, and deliver a report documenting the product & the process of creating it). At the start of each project you would get a document explaining what categories the product & presentation would be graded on and what a failing, passing and excellent grade would look like, so you had a clear goal.

I have the feeling the system only works with great teachers (which was the case in 90% of the teacher I had during my 4 years).

They would also have feedback rounds after each semester and actually change things based on feedback, applying the design process on the course itself.

It was a really great experience and I would whole-heartedly recommend that program to anyone interested in design/programming.

at my university (Italy), exams were typically composed by one or more written session and a final oral exam. In the written one we were asked to solve exercises, no multiple-choices questions. They would last between 30m and 2 hours, depending on the size of the exam. In the oral one, we would also go over the solved exercises and discuss about mistakes and choices. Sometimes, mostly for laboratories, the written one was replaced by an assignment to be done at home, typically in form of a report of the activities.

It's certain that this Socratic professor has preferences and biases, like everyone else in the world, some of which he will be unaware of. How is he to avoid these biases affecting the conclusion he draws?

One way of doing this is to make the viva entirely pass-fail, with a fairly low bar for passing. More of a sanity check to see that a student is generally familiar with the material as taught, and is capable of explaining their answers to questions they’ve previously solved (or variants)

Who is to say these biases dont already exist in exams?

Your charizma certainly plays less role.

We had oral exams in university. They are less fair then written ones for sure. For the record, I did well and tendes to know what to say. Could also bluff my way when encountering edge of my knowledge.

And seen a lot of bluffing, appeals to emotion, negotiation for better grades or special advantage. Once I have seen a guy negotiate C all the way to A - and no, no additional questions were asked.

Oral exams are not fair in any way.

This is how technical screens are done, as a conversation. Cheating happens, but it's blatantly obvious.

Then it's like a job interview. If the answer doesn't pop into your head the instant after you hear the question you go into panic mode and can't even answer questions you should know.

Though I suppose it would make people a lot better at job interviews if done for every class.

I had oral exams in Belgium where usually you are given time to prepare your written work. In the oral, the task then is to expand on your written work and answer questions that probe your understanding a bit deeper than the question itself. The professor might also ask you to hypothesize by changing some assumptions in the questions to check that you actually know the theory and have not regurgitated the book or copied it from someone.

Of course, this, in the rare cases it is applicable. In my current course we have 400 students with 3 Prof. ... So it is not really applicable.

Another thing to note is that undergrades' first job usually depends on having good grades. Some people will get lower grades and those will complain to the point of suing the university into having a more seemingly fair and unbiased process. (Note actually fair, but I'm pretty sure whoever will get a low grade on the Socrates style conversation will be pissed and demand something else. This kind of mentoring only makes sense in the PhD level really, where grades matter less)

I thought of this when posting. Honestly, universities are the educational equivalent of industrial farming. We need a rethink.

When I was in university (some time ago!), it was always the large courses that were easiest to game. They were also generally the subjects I was least interested in.

My small comp sci courses were amazing in contrast. Easily worth the cost of admission. I think the education system would be much improved if we had fewer, but significantly smaller courses.

So, you pay the same price, but instead of 100 courses of massive size, you get 25 courses of small size.

Fewer courses that are also smaller? Wouldn't that mean the number of students has to go way down? Paying the same price seems unlikely.

yes, the number of students has to go down, very few people want to take these 400 person classes, these classes are only taken by people because some random department needs funding, so they require people to take classes they don't need.

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