Guidelines for Teachers in Effectively Administering Exams

Teachers are facilitators of learning. This is a progressive view that teachers must take necessary steps to make learning and assessment easy for the learners.

Examination is the tool of the teacher to gauge the learners' understanding and mastery of the subject matter in a specific period of time. It is used to measure how well the students understand the lessons, how far has the students gone in terms of  mastery, how effective the teaching methods, strategies and techniques used by the teacher are and what improvements should be made to better the teaching-learning process.

Examinations are inevitably essential tools for learning. This is why teachers should keep in mind the basic things to consider in conducting an examination.

Last time we had GUIDELINES IN ARRANGING TEST ITEMS; now, let's have GUIDELINES IN ADMINISTERING TESTS.

1. Provide a quite & comfortable setting.

Examinations require the workings of the mind and John Locke said that a sound mind should be in a sound body. Of course, he said this to encourage physical activities in curriculum but this could also be used to argue that examinations should be done in a conducive environment.

Teachers should bear in mind that distractions can lessen the reliability and validity of an examination. This could lead the students to lose focus or could give them the chance to cheat. Either way is not good.

An examination should be conducted in a classroom where students could comfortable sit and think. It should be away from unnecessary noise.

2. Anticipate questions that students may ask.

Examinations should be perfect but if nobody's perfect, how can a piece of paper be? Yes, teachers should always try to make their assessment tools (exams & tests) perfect but they should also try to expect what questions might the students ask about.

Before the disseminating the papers, the teacher must clarify everything.

3 . Set a proper atmosphere for testing.

Setting a proper atmosphere for testing could be confused with providing it in a quiet and comfortable setting. Yes it could but atmosphere here refers to non other than the school's and the students' atmosphere. Conducting an examination during a time when there are many activities in the school where the students are involved in could lessen the validity and reliability of an examination. Also, conducting a surprise major examination would not be a very good idea.

Teachers should announce the major examination ahead of time to set the students' mind ready. Having prepared, the students' atmosphere would be proper enough to conduct testing.

4. Help students keep track of time.

The students are under pressure during examinations and they are most likely to forget that time is ticking away. It would be of great help for them if the teacher informs them how much time they still have but overdoing it would only put more pressure in them.

5. Implement established cheating rules.

Established cheating rules should be implemented during the exam. The students have to see this. If someone was caught cheating and sanctions were not implemented, it could lead to two things: the students will lose their trust and respect and they will worsen cheating.

6. Discourage cheating.

Yes, anyone can say "hadn't you cheated when you were in college and the answer could be affirmative but still, teachers must discourage cheating. The fact that you cheated in high school and in college doesn't give them the chance to cheat and it doesn't give you the rights to tell them that they can cheat.

This is more of an idealistic philosophy in the pedagogy. We should try to uphold moral and spiritual values in the classroom. Simply saying that you don't want them to cheat, that Jesus is looking at them or Satan will make them his disciples when they cheat could discourage cheating.