I agree with those who think that it is a very spread issue, at least in HE. But I´d prefer to consider it a social problem, and a methodological problem, generated by traditional way of teaching. An appropriate use of active methods, including the use of ICT tools, could contribute to more interaction among students and teachers; on the other hand, evaluation design should consider not only "final" controls, but all learning process as well.

The issue is lying with orienting exams and further final evaluation. If continuous evaluations happening, this behaviour may be curtailed. Some universities do not have final exams. The y do conduct every fortnight exams and marks will be counted. Especially the mode of teaching matters. 

I think every student in every country would prepare its exam just few days before the date. That's why it is very important to enhance students to be always ready, revising every day. In my case, I give them regularly activities to do. These activities are all evaluated and they know this. Marks motivate them to work.

I think it is difficult to generlaize among all students that they just study few hours before the exam time. the issue varies among students in general and according to their level of study, and speciality as well. In addition, the system of education may have an effect on the way of students' study; for example if there are frequent assignments rather than exams, or quizes.

I think that formative evaluation (during the semester) could lead to higher academic performance and help students to develop their time management skills. For my subject matters, I frequently use tests and quizzes during the semester, not only the final exams.

I agree with those who think that it is a very spread issue, at least in HE. But I´d prefer to consider it a social problem, and a methodological problem, generated by traditional way of teaching. An appropriate use of active methods, including the use of ICT tools, could contribute to more interaction among students and teachers; on the other hand, evaluation design should consider not only "final" controls, but all learning process as well.

It is common that students study for examinations or for any assessments very close to the time.  

Incidentally the percentage score given to final examinations is usually higher than that given to the continuous assessment done during the semester. This makes it even more necessary for the student to put the last ‘push’ to study and pass the final examinations very well.

 What can improve this situation is to motivate students to understand that they are not in the school just to pass examinations but to learn and be able to apply knowledge to real situations. How? Curriculum planning should take into consideration the need to assess students’ performance all through during the academic year. Our teaching/facilitating methods should encourage application of knowledge as the academic year progresses.  The curriculum needs to engage other evaluation methods. Final examinations are not the only time/ way to evaluate performance.

Let's face it - current generation of students have 'google'. They are not going to spend time on reading through entire book or even chapter. Most of them have been hardwired now to look for specific portions on internet and learn in pieces. 

The tougher task for teachers is - can they break the entire subject into smaller modules with standing out learning outcomes? the students can be continuously engaged through series of such learning modules and need of the final exams would be to 'interconnect' these learning from individual modules.

In my view, assessment should be based on evaluation of 'most important learning outcome' and should be independent of 'preparation hours put in by students'. Whenever I taught the subjects I tried to assess them on varying levels of cognitive skills (Bloom's Taxonomy) through series of regular but smaller tests. It doesn't matter how much effort they put in - as long as they are learning the higher levels of skills.

In the programmes I taught in the UK, we very rarely used final examinations, for many of the reasons stated in the posts above. For my part, what I wanted to avoid was the 'test of memory' that most of us underwent in school, as opposed to finding out what a student knows & can apply to their given field.

To this end, I used a wide range of assessments, ranging from essays, open book assignments, coursework, role play, posters, portfolios etc. All of these however, had to allow a student to demonstrate their knowledge / practice, in line with a set of common assessment criteria. These centred on:

Subject knowledge and understanding

Intellectual skills - including analysis, evaluation, and critical judgement

Subject-specific skills - including applications and problem solving

Transferable skills - including communication and presentation

Whilst exams do hold a place in assessment, I feel that they are prone to the issues outlined above. Also, if they are used as the main/sole medium of assessment, then this puts a distinct disadvantage on those who do not perform well in exam conditions.

I attach the Assessment Criteria (undergrad-masters) we used as a core guide (these date back to 2010). We also used formatted unit & assignment guides & a marking sheet which outlined clear areas & levels of performance. In that way, students knew exactly what the unit was about, what it looked to provide, how the student would be assessed, & what was expected of them to achieve at different levels.

I like to think this was a very open approach that gave the student every opportunity to demonstrate their abilities, whilst conforming to a rigorous level of quality standards. Also, it was transparent & the way a student had been assessed (& their resultant grade) could be readily explained against set criteria. Although exams are a staple in many countries, they are not (IMO) always a reliable way to assess knowledge and application.

I agree with Nicholas E. Rowe's assessment. In the course of more than 15 years of university teaching, I have tried a variety of approaches to motivate students to study and demonstrate what they have learned. Teaching public policy analysis, research and statistics in schools of social work was challenging because clinically-oriented students were typically not interested in the subject matter, even though it was part of the core curriculum. The occasional student embraced the content and usually went on to pursue an atypical non-clinical career path. So, bottom line, I believe it is important to evaluate student outcomes as a function of their interests and, as a teacher, feel blessed when you connect with and draw some students to embrace the subject matter being taught. As a teacher, maintaining your own morale is important to maintaining your own productivity.

Martina Gaisch and Nicholas Rowe are on the right track.  

The culture of test taking has many factors.  Factors that are external to the student and factors that reside with the student.  The culture of not only the college/university, the division in which the course resides and the culture created by the instructor guides some aspects of  how and when students study.  Of course it is also tied to the design of your overral course and program which includes the design of the assessments.  

Then we have the student and all of their experiences with learning, education and associated organisations.  These experiences are what cultivates particular behaviours when approaching studying.

Does it include societal norms?  Most definitely, but it the behaviors are more tied to any and all experiences they had through out their lives.

Great question..:-)

 Very good question. I had previously posted a question similar to this one (please see the link below & the good comments by RG colleagues). It seems that there is a worldwide problem of students only studying for a short period prior to exams. It is our duty (& all those concerned) to resolve this problem.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_Can_We_Encourage_Students_to_Study_Continuously

I tend to agree with much of what has been said. I find that although there is a vast amount information available to students, they are not able to harness what is relevant and current for their assignment, which in my case is mostly 100% course work. In addition, I find that they sometimes violate the late submission policy by not adhering to the proper procedures and put much burden on their academic deparment in determining what penalty to apply to the marking of these late assignments.

I think the problem highlighted in this question is not typical to a particular course or a particular country. In general the students for higher education courses are reluctant to learn possibly because they have more important work to do. I am trying to list them as follows.

(1). With proliferation of IT industries the job potential for every discipline is confined mostly to this domain. Therefore only the degree not the knowledge is more important for getting a job. Selection is made through aptitude/IQ tests and interview that requires special training/practice. Students spend mor time on that.

(2) Multiple choice type questions are set for the admission test for the next course. Students spend more time on such preparation so that the next admission is ensured.

(3) We the teachers are compromising with the evaluation process and therefore students are facing no problem in getting there degrees even with almost zero knowledge.

(4) We should also try to explain the students why they should learn, what is the motivation of the course etc.

Anup: you raise two scary issues. Firstly, the degree is used simply as a badge or credential,  & people seem OK with it  (in regard to the employment market). Secondly, we have a system where a degree can be obtained with "... almost zero knowledge", which begs the question as to what the aim of a degree process is & what roles & responsibilities universities have .... in fact - as degree issuing institutions, why are we here?

Nicolas: Your question, ". . . as degree issuing institutions, why are we here?", was addressed by an op-ed in todays edition of the New York Times (5-9-15), "What's the point of a professor?" http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/opinion/sunday/whats-the-point-of-a-professor.html?ref=opinion. I began to complain early on with the advent of cell phones that brought to a halt the old practice of students lingering after class to continue with the instructor and among themselves classroom discussions. Now the static reality appears to have brought everything to a halt . . . except for student entertainment and perfunctory testing to justify the imposition of mostly "A"s. It is hard to justify any tuition increases for what passes these days as higher "education." The serious student with a computer anywhere in the world can obtain free-of-charge university credits at some of the best universities in the United States. http://study.com/articles/Colleges_and_Universities_that_Offer_Free_Courses_Online.html.

Dear Nicolas,

I quote from your post, ". . . as degree issuing institutions, why are we here?", I think we the teachers should not allow to dilute the evaluation process. There will be resistance even from the society, but we should not yield to it. At the same time we should also try to motivate our students for learning. We need to explain them what benefit they will get by acquiring knowledge. I will not suggest too much application of ICT to make the learning process more entertaining. Unsupervised learning should also be discouraged. Also we should try to prove ourselves (the teachers) more responsible.

Anup: I am not sure that ICT serves solely to make learning entertaining - I am not a fan of 'bells & whistles', but ICT enhanced learning helps to employ different learning approaches, different media, & of course enhance their access to a world of information that even the most expert of us would be hard pushed to provide.

Also, I am not sure about discouraging unsupervised learning. I hold that a key aspect of HE is precisely to create this independent learner, who can accrue information, formulate thought and contribute information to their fields in their own right. I have a great fear that if we regard ourselves as supervisors, we run the risk of imposing our own thoughts and approaches. If students 'regurgitate' what we do & say as exam-type answers, it simply reinforces the traditional (& outdated?) perspective of 'master & student'. Speaking for myself, if I teach them via a range of approaches & media, it hopefully facilitates their learning & allows them to be the best they can be. If this makes them 'better' than me, then I have definitely served a purpose, but I hope at least they will be different & of use to their society  ;-)

John:  interesting that the NYT article talks of us as becoming simply accreditors. Ideally, a degree serves as an accreditation, but only if it represents true internalised learning in the required field at pre-defined levels. It raises telling issues, such as the rising rate of 'As', the student as a customer etc. & part of this can be traced back simply to money: students pay (one way or another) to attend, so their satisfaction revolves around what they perceive they get for their investment (including their grade). Their 'satisfaction' has a knock-on effect of making a course 'popular', its teachers 'valued' etc, so the current situation is not surprising. It would be great to see a sort of 'anti-university' that had no need to attract funding or students, but simply focused on the learning experience of those who are there & separated the 'working environment' from the 'learning environment'. Students can go & work in working environments, but should learn in learning environments. Let the results speak for themselves, but maybe people would then be able to disentangle a set of values that have (due to misconception) become hard to differentiate. I tell you what - if I win the Euro lottery next week, I will fund it myself !

Dear Nicolas,

In your last post you have raised two issues, viz.,

(1) application of ICT

(2) the question of unsupervised learning.

First, I am not against ICT. I do agree that the academic quality of teaching can be enhanced by such application. For example, we can explain many intricate physical happenings by using simulators. This is so because simulators do support time scaling and therefore it is possible to analyze a system in more detail. However my objection to the application of ICT for making teaching more colorful, more entertaining. In doing so it looses its seriousness.

Unsupervised learning of a new concept may be dangerous. One may get a completely wrong idea. Latter it could be extremely difficult to correct because the student will try to co-relate many things with this wrong idea he gets from the unsupervised learning. For correction, therefore the entire process needs to be undone.

Precisely Anup - is one of the issue that students are not taught sufficiently well how to study (& why) at the outset? We often used to have mandatory 'development' units, but these tend to have become 'integrated'. Are student picking courses & creating their own degrees nowadays, & does this actually have an adverse learning outcome (even if they are more 'satisfied') ?

 I’m replying with a delay due to health issues...

Thank you all for replies and suggestions. I see the „bulimic learning” (well said, Martina!) is spread much more than I expected.

Martina, I targeted the „societal culture”. I was just wondering why are there such big differences between the students in Romania and the ones in Corea, for example, as far as the commitment to learning tasks is concerned.

Nicholas, thank you for the set of criteria.

Anup, I agree with you. Regarding the coloured slides: the students are more interested in the presentation design than in its scientific content. When it comes to professors being evaluated by students, what it matters is „popularity” (pointed out by Cecilia, as well)

Nizar, following the debates (thanks for the link!), have you conducted also an investigation of the phenomenon? If yes, I would be interested to find out about the results...

Muayyad, you are right: it depends on the student... The problem is, too few of them learn constantly.

Dear Elene Indreica,

The case, you've mentioned, should be minimized by implementing process evaluation approach. The success of teaching can be measured by the process. Meanwhile, the implementation of try-out of the national exam, 1-2 weeks before the exam, can be conducted to improve the time management of the students.

Ethically are responsible for promoting social justice.

When students look at the reality of the job market they clearly understand that unemployment is highly expected. Maybe teachers should give a little more emphasis on Education as a Human Right and consequently have students more actively involved in the social and economic changes needed to achieve the social harmony that usually leads to greater motivation to become a better person , better citizens and consequently become naturally immersed in the search for knowledge.

Education is gradually becoming more of an ideological instrument rather than am ideal instrument to construct societies that are more just and promoters of well-being for all its citizens.

A debate exclusively focused on what teachers are and  doing and how will lead nowhere.

yes culture effects higher education everywhere

we depend on final exam therefore,student recurrent themselves about 1-2 days before and I think when you ask student about last exam ,not all answer

Culture effect the education being given to a generation. Education also effect the culture as an after effect. 

Major cultural influence is culture of teaching, culture of human learning in country. In our country people wants to get easy popularity through teaching. People want to read for marks, teacher also evaluates for marks. Clear understanding and common values in writing and evaluation is not taken care of.

Thanks for the reply, Arup and Tariq.

Interesting question & nice contributions. I am following.