We’re just about getting to the end of semester’s block of teaching weeks, so my attention is turning to final assessment once again.
With my first-years I’ve inherited a module on the EU that used to be mine some time ago and for which I’ve stuck to the assessment regime through curiosity as much as anything else.
As I’ve discussed elsewhere here, we’re piloting our new computer-based assessment system on the module, so I was keen to see how that changed things. Much of my attention in that regard has been to do with the coursework, but we’re also doing the final exam on it too.
It turns out that this is an excellent opportunity for me to get into open-book exams.
My student memory of these are watching law students carting in a dozen or more lever-arch files (ask your parents) into an exam hall, usually with at least one person have the entire thing spill out across the corridor outside or (on one tremendous occasion) across a busy street and towards a near-by canal.
Happy days. But not very enticing.
But because so much of the work has moved online, not least the exam itself, this seems like a good moment to visit the format.
For those who’ve not encountered it before, an open-book exam is simply one where you can bring and use any materials you like during the exam period. The idea is that it’s much more like a situation you might encounter in real-life than sitting in a bare room, answering questions you’ve hopefully prepared for, but using only what you can haul from the back of your mind.
The reason it’s not been so popular has been a mix of the aforementioned mess, the fear that students will just copy out other peoples’ work and the vague air that it’s not ‘right’.
Of course, I’m a big believer in changing what you when situations change, so why not try an open-book format?
It’s helped by the system being able still to detect plagiarism (final submissions are run through the usual software), plus it can note when a student suddenly dumps several hundred words at once.
Moreover, giving an open-book exam removes any feeling of accommodation to students about factual errors: my lovely mnemonics will be left at one side should I meet anyone who tries to tell me about the Council of Europe in leading the EU.
Of course, an open-book exam – while superficially attractive to students – is a big bear-trap. The temptation to ‘go check something’ will be very high, taking time away from actually writing an answer to the question asked. As those law students used to discover (when we talked to them on our way to the bar), it’s one thing to have access to lots of information, but quite another if you don’t know how to find the right information.
So, we’ll see. My impression so far has been that a lot of my students haven’t really clocked the different issues involved. If nothing else, if they’re relying on my flipped lectures as much as I think they are, then they’ll discover rather quickly that those are in possibly the least-helpful format for an exam.
Let’s hope those lecture notes are in good order.