Exams usually conjure up images of rows of students in a hallway, heads down, silently scrawling away. The exam paper, a pen, and, at most, a calculator or other specialized exam-related supplies are the only items on their desks. Notes and textbooks are not in sight.
However, there is an alternative. Open-book exams allow students to write their responses by consulting materials, notes, or even the Internet. Instead of depending solely on memory, students can use all the information available to them to help them write better answers.
During the exam, students are allowed to refer to study guides, books, the internet, and other resources. This may occur in a conventionally monitored examination setting, or it can be facilitated through technology.
Many people still don’t know the difference between an open-book exam and a take-home paper or exam. In general, there are two crucial differences between them: the take-home exam is conducted outside of an invigilated exam venue and gives students more time to finish it, whereas the open-book exam is timed and takes place under supervised settings.
Such exams help students understand the material in their textbooks as well as apply their knowledge to solve problems. The format of open-book exams requires students to comprehend the material and respond to questions correctly.
How Does the Open Book Test Method Help Students in Gaining More Knowledge?
If a student doesn’t know where or how to apply the findings of a lesson they have learned, their learning is incomplete. A critical skill that we overlook in the current educational system is the capacity to apply knowledge. Typically, educators instruct students to memorize lengthy texts, but in the process, the meaning and applicability are lost. To make this right, it is a better way to train students to apply their knowledge.
Open-book exams are very beneficial for students because they have so much information readily available to them in the twenty-first century. They can learn how to apply this knowledge in a way that will help them succeed if they have the necessary abilities. Open-book exams are a fantastic method to get students interested and motivated to improve their abilities.
Today’s students must not only retain concepts but also process (understand) and apply them, much like a computer system that has one memory unit and one processing unit.
Yes, there are a lot of benefits to giving open-book exams; they can help your students become better learners by redirecting their learning path. These five essential considerations should be kept in mind when creating an open-book test to ensure that it serves the intended goal.
What do Open-Book Tests Assess?
A significant goal of open-book exams is to develop students’ critical thinking abilities as well as their skills to research and analyze different problems. Since learning is driven by assessment, well-structured open-book exams can improve the skillset of critical thinkers who like utilizing their knowledge to act responsibly and proactively. Exams with open books are most appropriate for evaluating these higher-order thinking abilities.
For instance, students may have to interpret, analyze, or critically evaluate a given scenario or problem. Students must explore this case from a certain angle to develop a strategy that solves a given problem.
In addition, questions in a compare/contrast format could also be given to assess student understanding.
That’s why many schools and educational institutes have called for the standardization of open-book exams. That will help them support the claim that open-book tests promote critical and creative thinking.
How Do Open-Book Tests Impact Students’ Performance?
Let’s examine some of the data that is currently available regarding open-book exams.
Research on this topic seems to be lacking, especially when it comes to the unique setting of high-stakes exams. Furthermore, any claimed effects on performance may be the result of this lack of expertise rather than the test format, as many participants in earlier studies had little to no experience with open-book exams.
When comparing the open-book and closed-book exam formats side by side, researchers could not discover any appreciable variations in student performance. Students who believe they can find the answers in the materials they already have at their disposal spend less time studying for open-book tests, which has been linked to evidence that they perform better on closed-book exams.
However, further research on the impact of open-book exams will shed light on whether the claim that these exams are more beneficial is 100% true or not.
Like any other educational or assessment approach, open-book assessments also come with pros and cons.
Let’s take a brief look at some of the pros and cons of open-book exams.
What Benefits And Drawbacks Come With Open-Book Exams?
These exams can be helpful in evaluating the critical thinking and analytical abilities of students. It can also include scenarios and conflicts that students will have to face in their future work environments. Teachers and invigilators allow students to collect, synthesize, and evaluate data from various resources to form their answers or opinions.
Since open-book examinations offer students more creative freedom to use the course material and grant a better sense of control over their study, some students may prefer them to closed-book exams. Additionally, there is also proof that open-book exams result in lower anxiety.
Conversely, there is a risk that open-book tests won’t accurately gauge how well students can comprehend and memorize material.
According to some studies, students believe open-book exam questions to be more challenging and would prefer additional instruction on how to finish this kind of exam. It should come as no surprise that students who have less experience taking open-book exams initially receive lower grades until they acquire the necessary abilities to use the material and resources provided to them during exams.
Such exams may also have another interesting drawback. Some students may spend more time researching the material provided to them than developing their responses. This implies that the exam must either have fewer questions or the students have enough time to analyze and formulate their answers. However, reducing the number of questions may also mean that teachers don’t have enough responses to assess the data-gathering and research capabilities of students.
Important Things To Remember While Creating An Open-Book Exam
Overall, it seems like a reasonable strategy to make sure the exam structure aligns with the assessment goal. In general, open-book tests are helpful when the primary objective is to evaluate students’ capacity for information analysis and evaluation. In contrast, closed-book exams are useful in assessing students’ knowledge and memorization skills.
But how can instructors design the best open-book exams to achieve their assessment goals? Here are some tips to follow for ensuring that an open-book exam serves its goals.
1. Allow Students to Join the Dots
Design the questions in such a way that students can respond to them by connecting the jobs. For example, you can provide long passages from English literature in which they have to compare or contrast ideas or concepts.
2. Multiple-Choice Questions
We all think and behave uniquely. Allowing kids to be open-minded and original is one of the best ways to analyze their critical thinking skills. When an open-book test features a question with many valid solutions, students contribute their responses utilizing their analytical skills, which may provide you further insight into their personalities and interests.
3. Questions Based on Knowledge Applications
We can divide the process of learning into several stages, including interpreting, reading, visualizing, and applying the material. Thus, instructors should design questions that would require students to apply the knowledge acquired from their learning process.
The open book test method concentrates more on the implementation and application of knowledge, whereas traditional exam methods emphasize memorizing. Application-based questions should make up a significant portion of the open-book test.
4. Motivate Students to Analyze Text
Since everyone interprets, reads, and analyzes differently, every student can approach the same book or text differently. Designing an open-book exam in which students can read the same material and determine its significance before responding is another way of assessing students’ comprehension and thinking skills.
5. Encourage Judgment and Situational Awareness
Assessing how students act and respond to hypothetical situations is fascinating, especially as augmented reality gains popularity and becomes a common practice in educational settings. In conventional classrooms, AR technology can improve learning by providing students with immersive and interactive experiences, enhancing their understanding of complex concepts. The same can happen in an examination hall. Students can apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios through AR and VR technologies by stepping into a different dimension altogether.
Final Thoughts
The open-book exam method is an excellent strategy for assessing and evaluating the knowledge that students have acquired through active learning. It is a more thorough method of evaluation than a standard multiple-choice exam, which only provides a glimpse of a student’s memory and comprehension skills.
Additionally, an open-book exam allows students who may not be the best test takers to demonstrate their knowledge and abilities, which is essential in a curriculum that emphasizes application over memorization of facts. Furthermore, thanks to cutting-edge assessment technologies, conducting online, open-book exams is now simpler than ever.
