Can you imagine a world without exams?

We could be headed to a tomorrow where the much feared exam system is edged out by adaptive learning technology that will allow students to learn at their own pace and also assess their progress. Gwyn D'Mello finds out more

Exams are a big deal in India. Every year, like clockwork, our newspapers, websites and news channels will blow up with coverage, whether about toppers, pass and fail trends, paper leaks  or even suicides. But software designers over the world, and some in India too, are looking at a  way we can get rid of standardised testing. In the near future, your child might have two  teachers -- and only one of them will be human.

Adaptive learning is not a new concept; it’s been around since at least 2011. But developments  in the field have been slow, particularly because of technological limitations. Simply put,  adaptive learning uses software to help students study. They’re given study material in the form  of a video or a presentation interspersed with informal quizzing. This way, the software can  gauge how well the student understands a certain topic, whether he or she is struggling in a  particular area or subject, and even how that can be tackled before moving on to more challenging  ideas or topics. This allows students to learn at their own pace, instead of being forcibly dragged along  with the rest of the class. 

The real question is whether adaptive learning is an efficient model for the future or just a  passing fad. Avnita Bir, principal of Mumbai’s R.N. Podar School, says they’re currently beta  testing an adaptive learning programme. But, no matter how smart the software, she believes it  will be more efficient as a teaching aid than a replacement for teachers. “Machines may give us  data, but a lot more is needed to teach a child… Human involvement is absolutely essential.”

Dr Samir Dalwai, a developmental pediatrician with the New Horizons Foundation, is also of  the view that adaptive learning can be beneficial in the right circumstances. Exam-time stress,  for instance, is completely dependent on the child’s and the parents’ mindset. “Failure to progress at the  same pace as everyone else doesn’t breed stress; that happens because of competitiveness,” he  insists. He believes that adaptive learning systems will help motivate student since it’s the disconnect between the average class comprehension level and the student’s comprehension that discourages them.

So what if we do away with exams altogether? Wouldn’t that help root out the negative strain of  competitiveness and let students study in a rhythm they’re attuned to? While that is technically possible  if adaptive learning is widely implemented, Avnita Bir says that she doesn’t see it happening soon.  “We’ve got an exam-centric system that involves objective question assessments and the like. It will be  at least another two years before we can hope to see exams done away with, as students progress with  adaptive learning instead.”

As far as data is concerned, the obvious question is how accurate is adaptive learning software? Lohit  Sahu, the man behind R.N. Podar School’s software, is creator of the school’s new learning platform DEFY, has some answers. 

His team shoots educational videos in top-of-the-line film studios, and then has the children watch them at home. Between each section of the video, the students are asked multiple choice questions, which serve the dual purpose of letting the teacher know which students haven’t watched the video and also where each student is having difficulty.

Sahu, who is also director of Phyzok, a company offering adaptive learning solutions, says DEFY can give the teacher specific details --which parts of the video each student watched, how many times they watched it, even going so far as to suggest a question for the struggling student that might help jog an interaction in class the next day. “Even parents are put at ease. With only exams as a testing system, parents would only know of their child’s difficulties at the end of the year, when it’s too late to change anything. Our software, however, offers an accurate prediction of the student’s expected exam score, based on their progress in class,” he explains.

Phyzok is just one company offering adaptive learning solutions. So far, all its endeavours are “proof of concept” projects, including at schools in Mumbai, Delhi and a couple of rural Tier II and III schools. The company has been receiving only positive results from the experiment so far. And it’s not at all hard to implement. “It takes me about half an hour to add a school to our system,” Sahu says. “If we were to get the go ahead, I could have all the Tier II schools (over 100 of them) in the country using adaptive learning within three and a half years.” Your move, government.

Source | Daily News Analysis | 31 July 2015