Brown pioneered the practice of open-note exams ("we teach them to think logically," he said), and he's something of an educational pioneer in his own right.
To evaluate students' understanding of course material as a basis for determining grades, we assess students in all CREATE classes using a combination of in-class activities; writing assignments; open-book, open-notes exams; and class participation.
In addition, students taking open-note exams had lower lecture and review session attendance.
Interestingly, we did observe small differences in open- and closed-note exam performance and perception for students who experienced open-note exams for an entire quarter.
Exam scores did not vary under these conditions, but small differences were uncovered for students with experience taking open-note exams.
In addition, students are more inclined to expect that open-note exams will emphasize understanding and analysis (Eilertsen and Valdermo, 2000).
As the literature has demonstrated that students taking open-note exams are more comfortable (Gharib et al., 2012), we wanted to determine whether this intervention increased student confidence as well.
It has been shown that students taking open-note exams are more likely to prepare for such a test by gathering and critically analyzing material from multiple sources (Theophilides and Koutselini, 2000).
Only through increased exposure to open-note exams and use of well-designed assessments of its impacts will we truly be able to understand the potential benefits of this intervention.
While we expected to see the Bloom's 1 and 2 difference for all students, the fact that it is only evident for the chronic students implies that experience with multiple open-note exams is necessary to uncover changes in open-note testing behaviors.
Surprisingly, though, when students were given open-note exams over the course of one academic quarter, differences in both perception and performance were uncovered, implying that student test preparation or in-exam behaviors can be altered by exposure to this intervention in a single class.
