Guess I'll chime in too. With a couple of ideas. First, I make a distinction between lower and upper-division in my expectations. In LD courses, I expect the students to spend a lot of time acquiring information (memorizing) with a moderate focus on application of this information. In most UD courses, I back off on the acquisition requirement but really push students to work analytically with information from their reading -- mainly via class discussion and writing assignments. Since memorization is a primary focus (and since they have already thought and written extensively about the main concepts in their responses to homework questions over the reading), the typical closed-book test does not seem appropriate. So I allow them to bring their homework submissions and any notes they want to the midterm exams (but they can't bring their textbooks). This encourages them to tackle the homework questions in depth and they make lots of detailed notes summarizing the main ideas in the reading. I like the way they prepare for these open-note exams, they like the format, and I still get a decent point spread after grading their work.
Second thought: When I use an online instructional format, all tests are conducted online and hence are open-book. When I use multiple-choice tests, I set a time limit (usually based on 50 seconds per MC item) so the students have no choice but to study -- they don't have time to look up more than a few items (and they have to know the book well enough to know where to look). There is no reason why you can't use this same procedure in a traditional face-to-face class. Make it open-book but set a time limit so that they have to really study the book in order to complete the test before their time is up. --Dave ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Hogberg" <dhogb...@albion.edu> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@acsun.frostburg.edu> Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 7:17:25 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: RE: [tips] Open book test Just to chime in with a similar report, take-homes were easy for those who'd come to class ... -- ___________________________________________________________________ David E. Campbell, Ph.D. d...@humboldt.edu http://www.humboldt.edu/~campbell/psyc.htm --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
