As a student I've been taking plenty of tests lately. My university has a pretty good testing system and convenient testing centers and I'm a pretty good test taker so none of this really bothers me, but I have found the testing center policies interesting. The fact that I have to remove my hat before going in is one. Recently they've also disallowed the wearing of a wristwatch, almost certainly in response to the new smart-watch technology coming out. While this is the right thing to do, it does indicate a need for much grander changes in both the way we do things as well as our thinking, probably especially in education. Changes we are woefully unprepared for.
Let's consider the testing center again, perhaps as if you were the director of these. We made the change for smart-watches so that they won't be used for cheating. What will we do if Google Glass, or a similar project where data is displayed on a pair of glasses worn by the user, takes off and starts showing up? If that technology becomes integrated into people's prescription lenses? What about if those smart watches become smart tattoos? What about when students start having direct neural interfaces integrating computers into the brain? These problems are coming, and I think we can quickly see there's no easy solution, and maybe no solution at all to make a our current testing systems compatible with the existence of these technologies.
As my neuroscience teacher put it, most testing today is a simple demonstration of declarative memory. This is to say tests usually require a simple recalling of facts, figures, or other basic knowledge. However, the need for this to be done in the human brain is dwindling. Facts can be more easily stored, more quickly recalled, and more reliably maintained in computer systems than in nervous tissue. Why would we keep using cerebral circuits (that weren't really designed to do this in the first place) when we can use electronic ones? The go to example is memorizing phone numbers, something many of us remember doing before technology made it an exercise in pointless exertion of energy.
Lest you think this is the pie in the sky omphaloskepsis of a futurist and science fiction fan, let me relay a story I heard from one parent. He wanted to have his daughter writing letters, and specifically to do so using some specific vocabulary. Shortly after he heard his daughter speaking out loud while alone in her room writing the letter. Listening closer he realized she was using the voice recognition feature of the tablet/smartphone to simply ask for the spelling of the appropriate words. This was much to his disappointment, as he was expecting her to look the words up when writing them and learn the definition along with the spelling. That's how big a change something as simple as voice recognition is making.
A future where traditional testing is pointless seems on the horizon. How education will or even can deal with this is unclear. The problem with leaving our traditional testing is that other methods require more work to evaluate, and usually are less objective which can be a big problem for admissions tests like the MCAT. The only solution I've thought of is an increase in internships and apprentice work, but whether or not this is feasible is unclear. I know the major reason the radiology or medical laboratory programs at my school can't admit more than about 40% of applicant students is because they only have so many slots for clinical rotations available. It could be damaging to the economy to have the influx of cheap or free labor that having five interns or apprentices to every one trained employee might mean. The problem is a big one, and sadly I haven't seen it given all that much attention. Let's hope for and work toward that changing sometime soon.
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