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Comment by ethernot | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure this is the case. I work with a mix of younger and mature students and there is a distinct inability for the younger students to compose complex abstract processes.

When people do well as a cohort they are usually normalised against their peers. It requires a little more academic comparison across age groups.

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Isn't it also because of a change in testing methods? It seems to me that multiple choice tests are more and more widespread. These can be gamed more easily, since you can often eliminate some of the choices based on knowledge unrelated to the correct answer.

For comparison, during my own education, a couple decades ago, I don't recall having a multiple choice test ever. Maybe 1 to 4 grade in primary school. Maybe. Everything was problems, proofs, or essays.

Yes it was uncommon for me too. Our teacher in electronics back then did give us a multiple choice test because we asked so persistently. He wanted proof for why the option was chosen though. I thought he was just taking the piss but for one answer I could use proof by elimination and he accepted that. That proof was probably more work than just adding up a bunch of resistors, but it was also more fun :-)

I haven't seen an increase in multiple choice tests in my area (mathematics). We still require written answers and proofs. Some testing is computer-based but it requires entry of formulated results properly.

Really I spend my days shovelling PDFs around.

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