Exams were created to measure understanding.
Right?
But how reliably do they still do that today?
This is a broad topic, so let’s narrow it down to how exams these days measure the opposite of understanding — cramming abilities.
Many students have probably felt this at some point:
In many schools, especially across Africa, exams have slowly become a test of how well students can memorise and pour out exact phrases from the notes or marking guide—not how well they understand the subject.
This is because some teachers are used to grading answers by matching them word-for-word with the marking guide.
It’s the system they’ve known and worked with for years.
And so, over time, students have grown used to memorising definitions, paragraphs, and even whole chapters.
Not because they truly understand them but because that’s what gets them the marks.
Surely, there has to be a better way to measure learning.
What’s the Better Way?
✨The Rubric System✨
Across the world, many educators use rubrics to grade theory questions fairly.
A rubric is a guide that lists out what a good answer should have.
Instead of just checking for exact words, it helps teachers score answers based on some standard criteria like:
Main Points – Did the student include the key ideas to answer the question?
Relevance – Is everything in the answer directly related to the question without fluff?
Organisation – Is the answer well-structured?
This system is fair, flexible, and encourages true learning.
But here’s the problem…
Imagine marking 200 scripts like this. For each question, the teacher has to:
Read the full answer carefully
Compare it to each criterion in the rubric
Judge how well it meets each one
Then calculate a final score based on that judgment
Doing this for hundreds of scripts is not just tiring—it’s almost impossible to sustain, especially under time pressure.
What If You Could Automate That?
You can, with ACAD AI💙.
Acad AI is an AI tool that automates the rubric grading process for you.
When setting up an exam on Acad AI, you only need to provide your ideal answer (or not), and the system takes care of the rest.
It creates a detailed rubric, reads through each student’s answers, evaluates them based on the rubric criteria, and assigns a score that reflects true understanding.
Acad AI is Launching Soon!
If you're a teacher who believes students should be graded for what they understand, not just what they memorise, you're exactly who we built this for.
We invite you to join our beta waitlist to be among the first to experience Acad AI.
Let’s make exams about learning again, not just cramming.
Your favourite informant,
Oyin💙