08-06-2010, 10:55 PM
I attended B&M schools from '88-'92. (UF and Holy Cross.) I can right now think of 5 different classes I had that used "open-book" testing.* There may have been more that I'm simply not remembering at the moment.
We recently saw a story in the news about a group of people getting arrested in California (I believe) because of a scam they ran where people paid other people to show up to proctored exams on campus and take their tests for them. Does this mean cheating is too easy and every student who ever took a proctored exam should have his credentials invalidated? Cheaters are everywhere. If you want to go on a crusade against them, have at. Just make sure they are actually cheating.
I'm going to assume by the way you felt it necessary to say, "Bring it!" more than once, OP, that you are simply spoiling for a fight, but while you may have a valid concern, your nuclear solution to it is over-the-top and rather insulting to many people here who are working extremely hard. You are, in essence, saying you want us all to write gosh-knows-who and demand that many people lose their credentials and are stripped of their degrees because they MIGHT have cheated or they MAY not have learned enough to satisfy YOU.
You may want to rethink that stance after you've calmed down some.
*One exam in particular? Was on the ENTIRE Bible. A 90-minute exam on the Bible, asking extremely detailed questions. More than half the class failed. If you didn't know the Bible quite well, it didn't matter that you were able to consult it. There simply wasn't enough time to spend per question to pass it without having done extensive studying beforehand. You are assuming all open-book tests are "too easy" and therefore invalid or worthless. You have no way to truly determine if that is true. As the previous poster stated, I had several open-book tests that were much more difficult than the non-open book ones.
We recently saw a story in the news about a group of people getting arrested in California (I believe) because of a scam they ran where people paid other people to show up to proctored exams on campus and take their tests for them. Does this mean cheating is too easy and every student who ever took a proctored exam should have his credentials invalidated? Cheaters are everywhere. If you want to go on a crusade against them, have at. Just make sure they are actually cheating.
I'm going to assume by the way you felt it necessary to say, "Bring it!" more than once, OP, that you are simply spoiling for a fight, but while you may have a valid concern, your nuclear solution to it is over-the-top and rather insulting to many people here who are working extremely hard. You are, in essence, saying you want us all to write gosh-knows-who and demand that many people lose their credentials and are stripped of their degrees because they MIGHT have cheated or they MAY not have learned enough to satisfy YOU.
You may want to rethink that stance after you've calmed down some.
*One exam in particular? Was on the ENTIRE Bible. A 90-minute exam on the Bible, asking extremely detailed questions. More than half the class failed. If you didn't know the Bible quite well, it didn't matter that you were able to consult it. There simply wasn't enough time to spend per question to pass it without having done extensive studying beforehand. You are assuming all open-book tests are "too easy" and therefore invalid or worthless. You have no way to truly determine if that is true. As the previous poster stated, I had several open-book tests that were much more difficult than the non-open book ones.
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