INCREASING DIVERSITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: COGNITIVE DEMAND AND EXAM ACCESS

Abstract

Exams are the gateways to education and endeavours. Exams demonstrate everyone's strengths and gifts. Therefore exams need to be flexible and adaptable so that pupils can demonstrate what they know through a variety of ways. Simple changes and reforms in the system of exam allow a greater number of students with and without disabilities to demonstrate their knowledge, skill and experiences thereby ensuring high academic standards. Cognitively based disabilities or challenges impact students’ performance on an exam in various ways. Like, a student who is challenged by cognitively based disabilities can suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities which again impact their access to information on an exam. Such students can perform slower and cannot recall learned information on time during an exam. As diversity among the student population in higher education is rising day by day, it becomes important to increase the accessibility of exam with an understanding of cognition relating to exam. This paper aims to offer an understanding of how a variety of cognitive challenges may intersect a student's interaction with the demands of an exam and how to cope up with these challenges systematically in order to increase awareness of cognitive demand and exam design.