The Purpose of Exams - Not Just Torture!

If you think about the purpose of exams from both the professor’s and the student’s point of view it can change your attitude about testing and the way you react to tests.    Here are some ideas:

The Professor schedules exams in order to:

• Evaluate the individual students and assign grades.
• Give the students motivation to pause, review and study.  (We know that learning requires periodic review in order to become consolidated in your memory and we also know most students are unlikely to do this without the motivation of an exam!)
• Evaluate the learning of the entire class to determine if he or she needs to reteach a topic.
• Evaluate their teaching strategies.  Perhaps they will approach a topic differently the next semester.

From the student’s point of view, after an exam he or she can:

• Evaluate their understanding of the material.
• Evaluate their study and learning strategies.
• Evaluate their test-taking strategies
• Evaluate their career decision if the course is in their major.

So you can see that exams serve many purposes for both the professor and the student.  This information can change the way you view exams and your attitude about the whole process. 

Good luck as your finals are approaching!