Should School Examinations Be Open Book?

[Infected Mushroom]

School is supposed to prepare you for real life. Yet when you take tests and quizzes, you're not allowed to look at your notes, the internet or the textbook to help you out.

This isn't one bit realistic.

In the real world if a doctor doesn't remember some fact about an illness or about a certain medicine he doesn't give his patient his best guess (''I'm not allowed to look at the answers because that's cheating, so I'll just tell you what I think is the case here...''). No. The doctor would look at his notes, the internet, specialized books etc to double-check facts and then communicate the answer to the patient. Not doing so is irresponsible.

I'd say the same thing applies to lawyers, teachers (ironically), engineers and pretty much any profession where facts are important. If I'm trying to work out some variable about how likely a bridge will collapse and I don't remember a formula, I would obviously look it up.

So why are we not allowed to look up formulas, facts, and ideas during tests and quizzes? If it were realistic, tests and quizzes should be about application of those facts, ideas, and formulas and not whether or not you can memorize it. In the real world, how well you memorize facts is surprisingly irrelevant. Even when a lawyer goes before a court, he's allowed to take notes in.

School tests and quizzes should be open-book. You should be graded based on how well you communicate and draw on the facts and not on how well you blindly memorize. The difference between a good doctor and a bad doctor isn't how well they remember facts (they can look those up), its how well they communicate the facts and how well they use the facts. The same with lawyers and engineers etc

Homework assignment and essays and take-homes already understand this idea. So why not tests and quizzes?

If you're worried students will be less good at memorizing stuff (again, in the real world you don't need to memorize anything pretty much), just set out a specific class where students practice this rarely applied skill (call it ''Memory Education'' why not? You already have Physical Education). This way, students can be tested and quizzed realistically in history, math, and the sciences.

What do you think? Should everything be open-book?

[Othelos]

No

[Padnak]

We should get rid of standardized testing is what we should do...

[Infected Mushroom]

No

why not

[The Serbian Empire]

Probably not... it would be no better than teaching to the test.

[Othelos]

No

why not

No one would bother learning the material.

[Infected Mushroom]

why not

No one would bother learning the material.

just because you can look up a formula doesn't mean you know how to use it right...

Also, just because you can look up the facts doesn't mean you can write a good essay...

and so on

[Margno]

Yeah, it should be a question of the highest quality you can achieve with all resources: calculators, notes, peers. Because you're gonna have those things in the real world. You're not necessarily going to have to have stuff memorized, you're going to have to get results, by any means. I memorized a hundred thousand things to the test in high school and I don't even remember the quadratic formula now.

[Torrumbarry]

We should get rid of standardized testing is what we should do...

If only...

[The Lithuanian-Surinamese Caliphate]

Absolutely, with some possible exceptions. Most things you learn in school aren't meant to be remembered later in life right off the top of your head.

[Bleak Fjord]

I have to agree with the creator of this thread; School is so unrealistic and needs to teach us how to use our resources to help solve problems real life.
If you disagree, to each their own; But at least look at it from this perspective before you go making blatant, ill-informed judgements.

[Gingeska]

School isn't supposed to prepare you for real life, it's supposed to educate you.

[Forsher]

We should get rid of standardized testing is what we should do...

Being more specific..?

To the topic, not all of them as it is not always possible to separate notes from facts in this fashion. Exams are not like reality but this is not a problem when the material examined is decent. More thoughts from me in eight hours, good night.

[Othelos]

No one would bother learning the material.

just because you can look up a formula doesn't mean you know how to use it right...

Also, just because you can look up the facts doesn't mean you can write a good essay...

and so on

Sure, people can look up basic facts or formulas.

However, a lot of what is taught in school builds on itself. If someone just copies notes onto the test, without learning them, they're going to have problems later.

[Gingeska]

Also it sounds like someone just doesn't want to study.

Knowing things without having to look them up is preferred anyway.

The whole point of a test is to "test" what you know.

[Nazis in Space]

School is supposed to prepare you for real life. Yet when you take tests and quizzes, you're not allowed to look at your notes, the internet or the textbook to help you out.

This isn't one bit realistic.

In the real world if a doctor doesn't remember some fact about an illness or about a certain medicine he doesn't give his patient his best guess (''I'm not allowed to look at the answers because that's cheating, so I'll just tell you what I think is the case here...''). No. The doctor would look at his notes, the internet, specialized books etc to double-check facts and then communicate the answer to the patient. Not doing so is irresponsible.

I'd say the same thing applies to lawyers, teachers (ironically), engineers and pretty much any profession where facts are important. If I'm trying to work out some variable about how likely a bridge will collapse and I don't remember a formula, I would obviously look it up.

So why are we not allowed to look up formulas, facts, and ideas during tests and quizzes? If it were realistic, tests and quizzes should be about application of those facts, ideas, and formulas and not whether or not you can memorize it. In the real world, how well you memorize facts is surprisingly irrelevant. Even when a lawyer goes before a court, he's allowed to take notes in.

School tests and quizzes should be open-book. You should be graded based on how well you communicate and draw on the facts and not on how well you blindly memorize. The difference between a good doctor and a bad doctor isn't how well they remember facts (they can look those up), its how well they communicate the facts and how well they use the facts. The same with lawyers and engineers etc

Homework assignment and essays and take-homes already understand this idea. So why not tests and quizzes?

If you're worried students will be less good at memorizing stuff (again, in the real world you don't need to memorize anything pretty much), just set out a specific class where students practice this rarely applied skill (call it ''Memory Education'' why not? You already have Physical Education). This way, students can be tested and quizzed realistically in history, math, and the sciences.

What do you think? Should everything be open-book?

At what stage? Memorisation is important on the elementary school level, open book examinations are nonsensical there.

Grades 7+, I can see the value in some - not all, nor even the majority, but some - instances, but before then, not so much. But even then, it's worth noting that memorisation through practice is a thing - if a student has done his or her work with, I don't know, solving quadratic equations, these things will be memorised. If the test is failed on account of memorisation issues, there's a decent chance it was failed on account of insufficient practice.

Not applicable to obscure stuff, sure. But the basics? Most definitely.

Yeah, it should be a question of the highest quality you can achieve with all resources: calculators, notes, peers.[...]

Ahaha, no. I'm coming across entirely too many idiots who are incapable of recognising their own mistakes because they never thought about how they got their results, only ever punched some numbers into a calculator. As a consequence, a simple typing error resulting in a nonsensical result is accepted as fact instead of being instantly recognised as nonsensical and the result of an error somewhere.

People not learning it from the ground up are error prone. This isn't desirable.

[United States of Natan]

We should get rid of standardized testing is what we should do...

I agree, and I have to say, that the OP makes a very fair point. few professions require memorization of such information, simply the skills to apply it.

[Neutraligon]

It really depends on the topic. Some questions are so basic that you need to be able to answer them on your own.

[Ifreann]

Maybe at third level, but not primary or secondary.

[Gingeska]

And if I'm dying, I'm gonna prefer the doctor that knows what to do and not the one that has to go look up where my spleen is.

[Cetacea]

School isn't supposed to prepare you for real life, it's supposed to educate you.

Yes, afterall the system needs educated drones to keep it functioning, why would we want people who can think, ask questions or apply their skills to solving real world problems

[The New Lowlands]

And if I'm dying, I'm gonna prefer the doctor that knows what to do and not the one that has to go look up where my spleen is.

Would you be okay with a doctor that doesn't look it up and gets it wrong?

[Torisakia]

I mean, it's not like I don't already cheat on tests, because I do. But I think making school exams open book is a bad idea, because then even those who have learned absolutely nothing can pass with flying colors.

And because open book tests would ruin my cheating game.

[Ifreann]

And if I'm dying, I'm gonna prefer the doctor that knows what to do and not the one that has to go look up where my spleen is.

Would you be okay with a doctor that doesn't look it up and gets it wrong?

I'd prefer a doctor who doesn't need to look up things that are pretty basic to their job. This can be achieved by making doctors demonstrate that they know these things without needing to consult the Big Book of Body Bits before we give them a license to practice medicine or an MD.

[The Two Jerseys]

I'm a civil engineer, and for the majority of my engineering classes we were allowed to use notes for exams. One reason is that the professors knew that it's impossible to memorize everything, and for courses like structural design there's no one "correct" answer that meets the design requirements, so the exam would show that we knew how to use the design manuals to determine the most efficient design that would meet the requirements.

Then there was my transportation engineering professor, who flat out told us that we could use whatever materials we had during exams because "that's what you do in the real world".