Open Book Exam Courses

[sirjake]

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.

I'm not against open-book exams as a whole. I'm against this online sort.

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.

Right, but they were caught. It's much more difficult to get away with this than in the privacy of your home with no one looking over your shoulder. There is in the above case at least the pretense of verification (and it obviously worked since they were caught). I'm not asking for perfection; I'm asking for a good faith effort. I just don't see it.

I'm saying that men should not be trusted to this level when their own interests are at stake. It's the same reason we have locks on doors. Are locks going to prevent *every* intrusion? Of course not. But they help keep honest people honest. The same goes with precautions and verifications in education. I'm saying that these courses lack such precautions and verifications.

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.

Reread my original post. Did I anywhere state that I think that people should have their degrees stripped ex post facto? Nope. I want it changed for the going forward. I want to *protect* those who are working hard. Will this protect some slackers as well? Sure, of course. But I want those who work hard to actually reap the benefits of their hard work. If they work hard and get their degrees, I don't want the public to view it virtually the same as a degree mill degree.

You may want to rethink that stance after you've calmed down some.

The "bring it" (I didn't have an exclamation point) may have been slightly over the top. I thought it was justified. I think it's righteous anger and not a general bellicose spirit. I'm ready to take on *cheaters* and/or slackers who want the lowest possible standard. It wasn't directed toward hard-working students. Again, I want to protect the integrity of their degrees by weeding out these sources of credit that have little to no verification and are going to devalue their hard work. If you're working hard on your degree and take some of these courses, behave ethically and pass, then God bless you. But you're being naive if you think that's going to be the standard or the way the general public will look at things.

*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.

I am not assuming that. I'm assuming that *these* courses that lack proper verification are made up of easy to fake exams that encompass the entirety of your grade should be stopped. I'm not even saying that they're easy. I had to work hard on the exams above because I won't cheat. I'm saying that they lack verification of hard work. The exam you listed above sounds nothing of the sort, so of course I would have no problem with that.