Dishonesty in tests, a serious problem!

abuharokan ♦ Desember 8, 2011 ♦ Tinggalkan sebuah Komentar

Every time,when either the mid semester and final semester test come, a same question always comes to my mind. Are these kind of paper and pencil tests for my students are worth conducting?
Every school, including mine, of course always forms a specific committee to gather the test materials from teachers, multiply them, arrange and later give those test materials to students. Every teacher will also has a turn to be a supervisor for the test process. The committee has to arrange all of the supporting finance or budget for all of those necessities. And it is not a little amount of money!
But, I always find a reality that the process of those tests are far from being effective to measure our students authentic skills. I always find most, even, all students cheating during the tests. They do not trust their own competence in doing the tests. Furthermore, most teachers regard that this cheating behavior as common and not destructive for their students achievement.
So, every test period seems become “a joking period of measuring our students knowledge and skills”!!
To tell you the truth, I’m still confused about it and have not got such an effective formula to handle this problem!
But, to me, all this kind of dishonesty, at least can be reduced if schools apply many more various testing methods to measure our students’ authentic skills. The other methods such as presentations, language skills performances, real hand made creations , project tasks can be delegated to students.
I think those “real and much more contextual tasks” will motivate our students to be more self directed , generous , creative and, of course honest in doing their tasks.! Do you have any solutions for this problem? Please share with me!