Readers will probably to reject the idea of hand-written exams, and I do. But I want to focus more on what counts as 'the right answer' in these sorts of exams. Marlena Jackson-Retondo writes, "Students who weren't prepared for the exam also struggled to apply reason to their answers - an important skill to master for future policy makers," and suggested these struggles were masked by the use of computers. Masked? Or ameliorated? It made me wonder, though: does academic writing really depend on reason? Some. But my breakthrough moment while studying for a set of third year exams was the discovery that almost everything I was taught consisted of lists - nested lists, to be more precise. Academics - and especially educators - love lists. Students "focused solely on the content of the questions and applying their own knowledge and reason" are really just more likely to land on lists as a tactic: they're easier to remember, and they're easier to write out (even if disguised as prose, which is what I did).
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