Abstract:

When conferences were still held in person, I presented in Valencia (INTED 2019) a paper on open book exams to highlight and make the case that this type of exam supported high-order thinking skills. Interestingly, in 2017 I introduced open book exams in both my 3rd Year Undergraduate Neuroscience modules in the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine (FoLSM) at King’s College London (KCL) when there was no pressure to do so; moreover, open book exams at that time were considered with suspicion by the university under the (erroneous) assumption they were not a valid mode of assessment; especially in the life sciences where the requirement of memorising facts is still considered the norm. Open book exams do allow the use of strategic questioning so to avoid that the students just regurgitate lecture notes. As most experts in the field recognise, open book exams support critical thinking and are a more ecologically valid form of assessment preparing students for the world of work and beyond. Writing open book exam questions needs creativity (e.g., one of my Behavioural science module exam questions asks the following: “Remind yourself of Hieronymus Bosch painting The cure of folly (1494): how far have we got in terms of understanding and treating mental illness from his times?”); it can also involve the use of external sources to set the question (e.g., “Evaluate the following statement: “The endless dissatisfaction of consumerism is the most oppressive addiction of all”. From ‘The Corruption of the American Soul is consumerism’, Ben Nicholson). From the analysis I have previously carried out, it ensued that open book exams are not perceived as being easier, they reduce anxiety thus allow for better quality answers and they sustain higher-order thinking. What is required though is training both students and staff in this type of questioning. The Covid-19 pandemic has made the transition to open book exams too fast with not enough time to dedicate to such training. Academic staff in FoLSM had to improvise open book exams questions to be answered online, at home, in 24 hours; due to lack of time and experience in most cases these were just the repetition of past exam papers with some minor tweaks; adapting exams which were only MCQ based was very difficult; we had quite a few cases of plagiarism and collusion. From my part I organised an open book exam workshop to support my colleagues. In my talk I will discuss about the experience of sharing examples of best practice in devising open book exams and about the benefits of being able to talk to experts in the field from different part of the world made possible by online platforms such as Zoom and Teams. Amongst the participants I have invited Prof Noel Entwistle, one of the greatest British pedagogist from the University of Edinburgh and Dr Sato from UC, Irvine.

I claim that open book exams should not completely replace closed book ones but that they should certainly be part of a varied set of assessment in Higher Education. I also think that we should keep what worked during the pandemic and discard what it didn’t. I am in favour of keeping open book exams online while setting them on campus (once the health & safety rules will allow this) to avoid the unfairness of different home circumstances (e.g., variable wi-fi connection, space issues, noisy environments and so on), maintain integrity and elicit a healthy level of stress before the exams, preparing the students for the challenges ahead.

Keywords:

Open Book exams, assessment and Covid-19, higher-order thinking skills, online exams.