Academic freedom

Of examination question, empowerment and academic freedom

Lately, there was brouhaha about the quality of questions in the final examination in the university. This is my view about the whole thing. Consider these scenarios:

1.      This story is from an American university of repute. The professor of a course offered in the university has his own style of teaching, unique to himself only. For all intents and purposes, the class is able to grasp what he is talking about. For the final examination, he asks the students to submit to him what they think their grades are. He takes the grade in good faith and factored in the final calculation of the course grade;

2.      A story has it that a world-class professor in a European university came to his class to give final examination to his students. He wrote down two questions on the board and asked the students to begin answering the questions. Time given was unlimited. A student finished and submitted his examination script to him only to find out that there was something wrong with the answer. He was allowed to have another chance to make it right. He told the audience that his job was to teach and until the students learned, he kept teaching them no matter how long it took him;

3.      The next story came from a university in the West, which is listed in the top 10 of world ranking. The professor gave only one question for a three-hour examination. The question asked was, “Why?” The students were surprised by the one-word question asked. As the professor was given full authority by the powers-that-be to ask what he thought the best question to test the understanding of the course he taught, there was no complain. But the majority of the students looked puzzled although they started to write, many pages. The best student in the class spent time thinking about the question. He thought of some answers, but did not like them, and so he tore off the answer script. He tried some more but still not quite like it. At last he took a nap and spent time thinking about the question. He scratched something on a piece of paper and submitted to the professor just in time before the bell rang. The other students thought that he was finished. When the result came out, he scored the highest mark (A⁺). The answer he gave was, “Why not.”

What I am driving at, as lecturers of the courses, we should be given the autonomy to ask any question we think is the best for the examination. No body else in the university is better than the lecturer teaching that particular course themselves. This is what academic freedom is all about.

To be a world class university, we not only feed the students with fact related to the course we are teaching, but we also encourage them to think critically.

Shamshuddin Jusop