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A university teacher allowed us to use everything during the exam, including a laptop with an internet connection. The only rule was that you weren't allowed to

A university teacher allowed us to use everything during the exam, including a laptop with an internet connection. The only rule was that you weren't allowed to use any communication with other people, like messaging someone or asking questions on forums. Needless to say, everyone passed that exam. For myself, the most-hated part of every exam session was having to memorize everything. That's what made me fail every single exam I've ever failed. I just can't bring myself to stuff information into my head and then give it back later. It's not a storage device. Yet most other teachers insisted that I need to do everything from memory. 95% of my school and university "education" was to memorize something, then recite it, and then forget it forever.

CRConrad 5y ago
> I just can't bring myself to stuff information into my head and then give it back later. It's not a storage device. Funny, I thought that's pretty much exactly what it is. > 95% of my school and university "education" was to memorize something, then recite it, and then forget it forever. Did anyone actually order you to forget anything? I don't think that part was mandatory.
professoretc 5y ago
I've done open-everything exams (just no collaboration) and my experience was that it didn't change the mean grade, but it did increase the standard deviation. Students who were already mostly on top of the material could look things up and double-check their work, so their scores improved. Meanwhile, students who didn't really know what they needed to spent the whole time trying to find "the answer" in the book or online (and that's not the way programming tests work!), so in the end they either left the answer blank or put something totally nonsensical, copy-pasted off the internet. In a closed-book test, they would have at least tried to figure it out on their own, and maybe gotten a few partial-credit points.

CRConrad 5y ago

> I just can't bring myself to stuff information into my head and then give it back later. It's not a storage device. Funny, I thought that's pretty much exactly what it is. > 95% of my school and university "education" was to memorize something, then recite it, and then forget it forever. Did anyone actually order you to forget anything? I don't think that part was mandatory.

professoretc 5y ago

I've done open-everything exams (just no collaboration) and my experience was that it didn't change the mean grade, but it did increase the standard deviation. Students who were already mostly on top of the material could look things up and double-check their work, so their scores improved. Meanwhile, students who didn't really know what they needed to spent the whole time trying to find "the answer" in the book or online (and that's not the way programming tests work!), so in the end they either left the answer blank or put something totally nonsensical, copy-pasted off the internet. In a closed-book test, they would have at least tried to figure it out on their own, and maybe gotten a few partial-credit points.