With an open book test there is the chance that some of the answers will be right. I used to let the students bring a cheat sheet (had to make their own). Figured they’d spend more time in the book taking notes for the sheet than they would in regular study.
It’s a good question what you should be testing for in the age of Google. Remembering specific facts is less important. You need to have a basic framework so that you don’t have to track down every specific point, and so that you can recognize statements that are clearly wrong. However, it’s more important to be able to put the facts together to solve problems than to simply retrieve them. When I taught statistics—and this was quite a while ago—my in-class tests where all about “what do these results mean?” and “how would you find the answer to this question?” rather than performing computations or remembering formulas.
Open book tests are harder than just taking the test and hoping for the best. You only have so much time for the test and you waste too much of it looking stuff up for an open-book test.
Jeff0811 almost 3 years ago
So what are your thoughts on Kindle?
derdave969 almost 3 years ago
With an open book test there is the chance that some of the answers will be right. I used to let the students bring a cheat sheet (had to make their own). Figured they’d spend more time in the book taking notes for the sheet than they would in regular study.
davanden almost 3 years ago
It’s a good question what you should be testing for in the age of Google. Remembering specific facts is less important. You need to have a basic framework so that you don’t have to track down every specific point, and so that you can recognize statements that are clearly wrong. However, it’s more important to be able to put the facts together to solve problems than to simply retrieve them. When I taught statistics—and this was quite a while ago—my in-class tests where all about “what do these results mean?” and “how would you find the answer to this question?” rather than performing computations or remembering formulas.
bookworm0812 almost 3 years ago
Open book tests are harder than just taking the test and hoping for the best. You only have so much time for the test and you waste too much of it looking stuff up for an open-book test.
timinwsac Premium Member almost 3 years ago
Books? What are books?
mistercatworks almost 3 years ago
Open ChromeBook?
ferddo almost 3 years ago
Reminds me of being in school back when calculators first came out. Teacher had to forbid calculators during math tests…
Also, had a classmate that thought “show your work” meant that he had to say what sequence he pressed his calculator keys…
Sailor46 USN 65-95 almost 3 years ago
An open book test doesn’t test if you know the answer, it tests if you know where to find the answer.