Following the western pattern of open book exam, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has taken an initiative to banish the rote learning concept prevalent in the Indian education scene. The Open Text Based Assessment (OTBA) was a whole new term right from its introduction to the recent release of the text material that would be used for assessing the analytical abilities of the students.
It is a first of its kind initiative with the thought that multiple modes of assessment are needed to cater to the varied abilities of individual strengths of learners. Till the recent release of the text material for the assessment, the teachers as well as the students were not clear about what the whole concept of OTBA would contain. OTBA is meant to develop higher order thinking skills and analytical abilities which would thus help in moving away from memorization.
The first time I heard about this maiden concept, I wondered how the students would benefit from an open book exam like the one the CBSE has planned. But once I got into the details and technicalities of the concept, I understood how the concept aims at building higher order thinking skills and analytical abilities. The assessment based on this concept would not actually allow students to carry the text material to exam halls for answering the questions but the textual material supplied a month in advance will be printed again as part of the question paper and thus will be available while answering the questions. From March 2014 the OTBA will be applicable to all main subjects of Class IX and Economics, Biology and Geography for Class XI. The question paper for OTBA will have questions of higher order thinking skills and some of which may be subjective, creative, open ended and value based questions. The lessons covered in the OTBA text material demand a truly analytical approach and the questions based on the case studies covered in the text material will be asked to test the abilities of the students.
Though the new concept aims at banishing rote learning, it has received mixed response from principals and teachers across the nation. While many considered it as a progressive concept which could revolutionized the education system of the country, another section felt the scheme was another half-baked experiment by the CBSE. While most schools in the country have appreciated the new system, some have still raised their doubts over its effectiveness. According to me, the new concept would help in developing the analytical abilities which the students otherwise lack when they memorize for the examinations. Effective study of the subject material released by the CBSE is necessary and one such resource for Class IX Summative Assessment II based on OTBA concept has been released by Arihant. It is the only book in the market giving the detailed study of CBSE text material having analysis of open text material along with explanation of key terms, graphs, tables, etc. The book also contains more suggestive questions, subjective questions, creative and open ended questions based on the given text material. I am sure this book is surely going to guide the students about the maiden OTBA concept.
No comments:
Post a Comment