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There is such a thing as an 'open book exam' where you literally have access to the textbook in the exam. The purpose of such exams is not to test your memoriz

There is such a thing as an 'open book exam' where you literally have access to the textbook in the exam. The purpose of such exams is not to test your memorization of the subject, but how well you understand it. The questions are more challenging, and are explicitly designed to see if you can take the information in front of you and synthesize or interpret it. If you don't already understand the material, having access to it in the exam will not help as much - when the questions are properly designed - as you can't just copy down a bunch of disconnected facts. Instead you have to build an answer that relies on those facts and the framework that surrounds them.

dahfizz 5y ago
Open book != google. Most my CS exams in college were open notes / open book, but Google was banned. > The purpose of such exams is not to test your memorization of the subject, but how well you understand it. The questions are more challenging, and are explicitly designed to see if you can take the information in front of you and synthesize or interpret it. The obvious difference is the existence of Stack Overflow. Synthesizing a correct answer from my hand written notes is a proof of understanding. Being able to google a question and having the answer produced for you is absolutely not a proof of understanding. Its the difference between letting a math student have a formula sheet, so the don't need to memorize all the different formulas they need to apply, and giving them access to wolfram alpha. The later makes the exam an exercise in copy / paste.
- gilleain 5y ago
  Oh I agree that google is the ultimate open book! Perhaps certain subjects are better suited to having broader questions. I still think it would be _possible_ to create CS questions that would not be helped by having access to a search engine. As an analogy, it's a little like the difference between a unit test and an assembly (integration, etc) test. The unit test question is just a simple one like "When did this King die?" or "What is the area of this triangle?". An assembly test is more like "What was the legacy of this King's reign?" or "What is the area of this shape that is the intersection of various other shapes?". I mean, Wolfram Alfa is only so powerful, right? Of course websites add features all the time, so it's always possible that the day the exam comes out they add a new "What is the area of this shape?" feature.
- Tainnor 5y ago
  A big part of exams for math majors is proving stuff, not applying formulae. Wolfram|Alpha won't be able to help you there. (That said, there's stuff like proofwiki or math.stackexchange, so unless you really spend time on crafting a novel problem, a student that is good at "researching" might be able to find a solution to a similar problem or to a substep of the proof, etc.)

dahfizz 5y ago

Open book != google. Most my CS exams in college were open notes / open book, but Google was banned. > The purpose of such exams is not to test your memorization of the subject, but how well you understand it. The questions are more challenging, and are explicitly designed to see if you can take the information in front of you and synthesize or interpret it. The obvious difference is the existence of Stack Overflow. Synthesizing a correct answer from my hand written notes is a proof of understanding. Being able to google a question and having the answer produced for you is absolutely not a proof of understanding. Its the difference between letting a math student have a formula sheet, so the don't need to memorize all the different formulas they need to apply, and giving them access to wolfram alpha. The later makes the exam an exercise in copy / paste.

gilleain 5y ago
Oh I agree that google is the ultimate open book! Perhaps certain subjects are better suited to having broader questions. I still think it would be _possible_ to create CS questions that would not be helped by having access to a search engine. As an analogy, it's a little like the difference between a unit test and an assembly (integration, etc) test. The unit test question is just a simple one like "When did this King die?" or "What is the area of this triangle?". An assembly test is more like "What was the legacy of this King's reign?" or "What is the area of this shape that is the intersection of various other shapes?". I mean, Wolfram Alfa is only so powerful, right? Of course websites add features all the time, so it's always possible that the day the exam comes out they add a new "What is the area of this shape?" feature.
Tainnor 5y ago
A big part of exams for math majors is proving stuff, not applying formulae. Wolfram|Alpha won't be able to help you there. (That said, there's stuff like proofwiki or math.stackexchange, so unless you really spend time on crafting a novel problem, a student that is good at "researching" might be able to find a solution to a similar problem or to a substep of the proof, etc.)