‘...which examiners can receive and mark on their iPhones”. ‘
does this mean all examiners have i-phones? Will the exam board be dishing them out for free?
Posted by on 03/31 at 11:33 PM
Exam Board to Adopt Twitter for AS Economics Exams
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
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Economics students who take pride in asking for “more paper please sir!” during their exams take note. From June 2011, all two mark questions in Section A of a well-known exam board’s AS Unit 1 Economics paper will restrict the amount that students can write - quite literally.
The Tweeter Q’s (shortened to ”Tweasers”) are designed to encourage students to develop a jaunty written style.. The catch? An answer can be no longer than 140 characters. Answers that exceed that limit, if only by a character or two, will be automatically awarded “null points”.
The Exam Board concerned has indicated that 10 marks out of 90 available will be tested using the Tweaser question style. Of those marks, up to 5 can be achieved by showing relevant knowledge, 2 for application and analysis, with the remaining 3 marks allocated to “quality of language”. Text language remains banned even with this new genre of question.
A spokesman for the exam board has commented:
“In the fast-changing UK and global economy, it is crucial that Economics students can get right to the heart of an issue with the minimum of fuss. Our innovative Tweaser questions encourage brevity of response, rewarding the student who can produce beautiful economics without any pretence or waffle. The top universities have been pressurising us for a way of identifying the brightest students and we think we have found the answer.”
“Another key benefit occurs behind the scenes. All of our examiners will be set up with their own Twitter account and we will be able to upload all exam responses to a secure Twitter tag which examiners can receive and mark on their iPhones or Blackberries”.
In secret trials of the new exam format, Economics students in Solihull, Norwich and Reigate were provided with specimen examples of the Tweaser questions. Students were generally pleased with the new approach, pointing to reduced hand cramps and the modern Twitter-style answer box on the exam paper as welcome innovations.
But not everyone was pleased. According to one Oxbridge hopeful:
“I’m gutted. I was halfway through defining the sub-prime crisis and I ran out of characters. I could have done with just three more letters. I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.”
A Head of Department at an independent school that has trialled the new Tweaser format questions ahead of 2011 thinks the format will prove a hit with students and examiners alike:
“In the department we’re coming up with a whole new series of acronyms which will enable our students to get more out of their 140 character allocations”
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Comments
You had me there Jim for at least two minutes as I scoured the article for a source.
Then the penny dropped: happy April Fools Day 
Posted by Richard Young on 04/01 at 12:13 AM
I trust we can look forward to the Tutor2u support material being available via the website soon? Complete with network licence, of course!
Posted by on 04/01 at 03:31 AM
Twit-Essays should replace coursework
Posted by on 04/01 at 06:55 AM
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