Typically, open-book examinations (OBEs) are those in which students can bring texts into a test for consultation purposes. The aim of allowing students access to information they might otherwise feel they must memorise is to enable them to concentrate more on analysis, problem solving and evaluation.

When students believe memorising large amounts of facts is necessary, they may feel compelled to simply recount all they can remember in their examination scripts without heed to relevance, organisation, and application. Assessors may tend to reward those who can recall more data. A heavy emphasis on memorisation has been widely criticised as shallow by those who advocate a deeper approach to learning, e.g. the search for meaning inherent in learning tasks1 .

It has been shown2 that OBEs can facilitate deeper learning by helping students to:

• use new knowledge creatively, i.e. they think more profoundly and critically about problems and develop their own answers instead of retrieving answers from established texts;
• master course content by practising study skills;
• self-evaluate their performance and identify gaps in their learning;
• reduce examination stress;
• self-regulate their approach to learning;
• increase achievement levels.

But studies also show that OBEs have not had any significant effect upon student learning3 . Thus for OBEs to deepen students’ abilities to learn, several issues must be carefully considered.

Tasks—What to Assess?

Setting open-book test questions is generally difficult. Asking students to list some facts from a text becomes nonsensical if they can refer to the text, unless the ability being assessed by the task is the capacity to find specific data from a text. In ‘higher’ education, the better questions ask students to focus on relatively unique problems requiring responses that are less descriptive, more analytical and evaluative, and that involve synthesising a wide range of information.

Aligning Assessment with Teaching and Learning

Good open-book questions require instructional methods that demand students to actively construct their own understanding of knowledge. Setting only recall questions implies that the teaching and learning process simply entails the transmission of facts. Allowing students time during the semester to explore unique problems in a manner that facilitates analysis, evaluation, and synthesis will help them develop the skills needed to handle OBE tasks. Unsurprisingly, students exhibit reluctance towards OBEs4 . A change in how students are assessed must be consummate with a change in how teachers teach to ensure that there is no disjunction between how students are taught and how they are assessed.

Marking Standards

Standards in higher education are premised upon making valid and reliable judgements about students’ work that are consistent between individuals and across institutions. This belief has encouraged a preoccupation with maximising reliability, sometimes at the expense of validity, e.g. lecturers may grade according to how many details a student recalls from set texts rather than how well the student represents each element. The former is easier to grade because there is less disagreement between markers. A lecturer’s willingness to be flexible when judging students’ higher order thinking skills and defend these appraisals in front of students, parents, and peers demands more time, greater effort and courage from the lecturer.

Conditions for the Test

Like other forms of assessment, OBEs are practised differently by different people. Consider the following when planning an OBE:

• Should there be a fixed time for the examination?

  An examination’s time limit should depend on the tasks that students must complete. While some flexibility is appropriate, not all students respond well to speed tests; so students should be told how much time is reasonable to finish the task. One study5 on OBEs reported that students, who were given unlimited time, took up to 8 hours when the task needed only 2 hours to complete. Another factor to consider is how the lecturers expect students to use the texts that they bring. If students are required to use the texts extensively, e.g. search through financial data for trends, then a suitable amount of time has to be allocated to the task.

• Should students be able to bring any text/notes into the examination?

  Obviously, this depends on what is being assessed. It may be vital that everyone has access to a certain text. Race6 suggests that there may be an equity problem in limiting students to bring in texts that are expensive and/or in limited supply. Whatever the case, students may need advice as to what might be appropriate and useful.

• Should students be allowed to collaborate?

  In a traditional examination context, this perhaps seems outrageous. However, if the aim is to help students solve problems by giving them access to a wide variety of sources and peer discussion has been an important part of the learning process, consequently allowing students to consult their peers during examinations may be worthwhile. This naturally presents another set of issues that need to be investigated.

Conclusion

Although not a panacea for the challenges of assessing students, OBEs do prompt faculty to reflect upon the fundamental issues underpinning higher education. What tasks should be set to assess desired outcome? How does one teach students the skills needed to finish these tasks? How does one mark in a valid, reliable manner? Finally, how does one create a test so that students have maximum opportunity to demonstrate higher learning?

OBEs generally necessitate better questions than one usually sets in traditional invigilated examinations. As OBE questions requires skills beyond recalling facts, the instructional methods must demand that students become less passive recipients of information from texts and lecturers. OBEs that foster deeper learning entail more from lecturers when setting and marking the questions. Lecturers must carefully consider the impact of the assessment process on student learning, i.e. “If I allow students access to texts in the test, how are they likely to use them?”

Ultimately, OBEs can be useful as they encourage students to focus less on memorising and more upon higher order thinking skills by asking students to use the materials they bring into the examination in a manner that facilitates skills such as synthesis. More controversially, OBEs can also facilitate better thinking by allowing students to bring any text they wish but with the intent to prove the point that the examination answers are not found in any single textbook, but rather, are best discovered from thinking carefully about what they have learnt in preparing for the test.

Endnotes:

1. Biggs, J. (1987). Student Approaches to Learning and Studying. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.
2. Theophilides, C. & Dionysiou, O. (1996). ‘The Major Functions of the Open Book Examination at the University Level: A Factor Analytic Study’. Studies in Educational Evaluation. Vol. 22, No. 2. pp. 157-170.
3. Jehu, D., Picton, C., & Cher, S. (1970). ‘The Use of Notes in Examinations’. British Journal of Educational Psychology. Vol. 40, No. 2. pp. 353-357.
4. Gray, T. (1992). ‘Open Book Examinations’. CAP-Ability. Vol. 2. pp. 10-14.
   Michaels, S. & Kieren, T. (1973). ‘An Investigation of Open-Book and Closed-Book Examinations in Mathematics’. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research. Vol. 19, No. 3. pp. 202-207.
   
5. Boniface, D. (1985). ‘Candidates’ Use of Notes and Textbooks During an Open Book Examination’. Educational Research. Vol. 27, No. 3. pp. 201-209.
   
6. The Standing Committee on Teaching and Examining. Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty Survey 1998-99 Cambridge University. http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~egk10/
   survey99/survey.html#Q43. (February 2000).
7. Baillie, C. & Toohey, S. (1997). ‘The Power Test: Its Impact on Student Learning in a Materials Science Course for Engineering Students’. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. Vol. 22, No. 1. pp. 33-48.
8. Race, P. (1995). ‘The Art of Assessing’. The New Academic. Vol. 4, Issue 3. pp. 3-6.