What do you think about open-book, online tests in DL classes? Are most too easy?

No, it was just a community college class. Mostly pre-nursing students.

 

Yes, it appears that timing the test is the key. What I don't understand is why some schools allow so much time. I had one 10 question, true/false test that was given an hour to complete. What is the value of that? Not much.

 

I give mixed format exams in my DL classes. I use multiple choice, true/false, matching and fill-in or essay questions. My students are told the exam is NOT open book and I also set a timer so they only have usually 1 hour to complete a 50 question exam. I use the time it takes my in-class students to complete the same exam as a guide, so I know it can be completed in the strict time limit. It makes it hard to look up material, although, I did have one student last term who copied and pasted answer directly from the web, including the website color, font etc. Needless to say she failed that exam. It is almost impossible to remove cheating from any form of testing, but I think to protect the integrity of the school, program, course and instructor we have to try to maintain exam integrity as best we can. I teach at the community college level, so full essay exams would be too painful for my students and for me! I'm lucky to get a 150 word essay without a ton of grammer errors. A full essay exam would be too painful! I have students from other states taking my DL classes, so proctoring or requiring on-site testing is almost impossible, I tried.

 

Sounds like you are doing a good job! You have obviously given the process some study and matching the time-frame of your in-person tests to your online classes is a great idea. Question: When you tell the students the test is not open-book, you have got to assume that a number of them will ignore that. What's the point? Why not just make it open-book but inform the students that there is not time to look up info if they don't already know it?

 

I've never taken an online test, so I can't speak to that.

But when I was a B&M student, I found that open-book exams were typically more difficult than closed-book exams. The latter were often just matters of repeating information back. The former usually involved solving novel problems that may have been intentionally designed to confuse us. The professors would tell us that we could bring in any reference that we thought might help us, then would smile the most evil smile that you can imagine.

 

I have always hated those kinds of test and often wondered if they are really fair. Sure, they are a test of intellect, but when a test is over material that is not covered in the class or the text, I have often wondered if that is a really fair test of how well a person has done in the class. The grading is often rather subjective on the part of the professor, which adds another concern over how fairly and accurately the test measures how much a student has learned in that particular class.

 

For me it's been that online courses are almost compensating for something. Some have been bone-crushingly difficult, much more so than my B&M classes were. My Social Psychology Final Exam (TESC) consisted of FOUR essay questions! And one was not covered by the material at all -- I had to bluff my way out of it based on the language used in the question. Still made a 97! (Okay, now I'm bragging lol). Midterm was the same setup, only it was proctored and I had to write it by hand (ugh), made an 88 that time because my handwriting sucks. :'( On the plus side, I could switch around between questions for the proctored mid-term.

But I think there's a fundamental error in considering them easy if what reduces the difficulty is cheating. Not to rehash this again, but you can cheat any time, any place, on any test, online or in-class or on-base even. Cheating makes things easier, that is the whole point. Plenty of "real" academic exams have cheaters. Now, I'm not advocating cheating and I work my arse off to get my decent grades, but in any arena it's possible to cheat.

@BillDayson Oooh, I love and hate those. I usually get caught up in some wordplay and totally misunderstand part or all of the question. But I think they are sneaky so I love them =)

 

I just completed my open book final for my first online DL class (MS in Project Management) at Brandeis University. It took me 18 hours to complete. It was thirty questions long. It was tough. Many of the questions were multiple part essay questions. It ended up being 19 pages long when I was finished. I'm sure I could have finished a little so but I researched everything and took my time. The class started off pretty easy but it got harder as the course progressed.

Dave

 

the convicts ?

 

LOL!....:lmao: