• Closed book exams are fucking pointless(especially in College)
    171 replies, posted
[QUOTE=yawmwen;27407334]With modern cell phones and laptops there should [B]never[/B] be a time in your professional life when you are unable to near instantly grab relevant data. By the way, stuff like doctors and lawyers don't count, since they sort of have to remember a shit ton of information for their professional life.[/QUOTE] Power's out, your phone's unavailable, and/or no books are nearby, what are you going to do? You also contradicted yourself in your second statement, any competent professional should be able remember information without needing constant information look up. You certainly won't see me walking around with a smartphone, searching for the proper nitrogen levels post IMLR in a waste water treatment plant. Or using a resource when out in the field in the receiving environment to make sure that the affluent abides by Clean Water Act requirements.
It's needed though, no one wants to wait in their cars whilst someone reads up in their book if they can park on double yellow lines or not. Certain situations though it's not a bad idea ie checking symptoms for disease and building a space rocket.
I like closed book exams because at the end of the day, that's what your official qualification is based on (assuming you're on a course with exams). If you go through the term/semester doing open book exams, you're going to be screwed on the proper test. If you do closed book exams during the term, you can identify on what you don't know and what you need to memorise before the real test.
[QUOTE=MuTAnT;27407562]I used to do well on these sort of things. I read what I needed to read the night before, memorised it word for word. Then forgot about it after the exam.[/QUOTE] If you can't remember it now, after teasing your memory a bit, you probably didn't study right.
[QUOTE=Charybdis;27407244]I just don't like timed exams, if I was actually able to finish them, easy A[/QUOTE] This times 1000. I'm fairly good at math, but only if i take my time and watch for errors, so since I never get to finish my math tests though I often end up failing. :sigh:
Though like you said it's a good way for people to know if you've actually understood the knowledge. That's why what I've noticed is that when you get an exam that is closed book it's usually easier questions if you've actually looked over stuff. Cause in the real world you're going to need to recall knowledge and not be like "hold on one second while I skim my book for the answer"
[QUOTE=yawmwen;27407334]Like I said, there is important information to retain, but the point of the class is to give you the fundamentals to be able to build on through practice or study. With modern cell phones and laptops there should [b]never[/b] be a time in your professional life when you are unable to near instantly grab relevant data. By the way, stuff like doctors and lawyers don't count, since they sort of have to remember a shit ton of information for their professional life.[/QUOTE] Exactly. For all you know, you could aspire to be one of those in the near future and then blame your teachers for not giving you the right 'skills'. To be on the safe side, they make everyone go through it.
[QUOTE=nigfops;27407600]This times 1000. I'm fairly good at math, but only if i take my time and watch for errors, so since I never get to finish my math tests though I often end up failing. :sigh:[/QUOTE] You're not as good at maths as you think, then.
How are you going to revise, learn or make an adquate mark scheme for an open source exam paper? I mean you can't really expect the exam markers to look up every individual cause to see if it's true or not. [QUOTE=nigfops;27407600]This times 1000. I'm fairly good at math, but only if i take my time and watch for errors, so since I never get to finish my math tests though I often end up failing. :sigh:[/QUOTE] Then practice them, it's taken me a year of accountancy to be able to construct a Trading profit & loss account with a balance sheet in within the time limit, just because I couldn't do it to begin with doesn't mean I never would.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;27407219] [b]Why should you memorize history when books have it already recorded down for you when you need it?[/b] [/QUOTE] Because school is teaching you for your future career, your not always going to have a textbook with you and its much easier to pick things up just out of memory.
I hate exams, it's just some crap they put in at the end of the year so the school looks good.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;27407881]I hate exams, it's just some crap they put in at the end of the year so the school looks good.[/QUOTE] Uhh no? I guess whenever you've done exams they haven't been for qualifications then?
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;27407881]I hate exams, it's just some crap they put in at the end of the year so the school looks good.[/QUOTE] Yeah, they just should pass everyone. Exams are stupid. For instance, surgeons clearly know what they're doing after watching. No need for them to be assessed.
The idea is you don't spend your entire exam trawling through text books and actually spend it answering the questions if you didn't pay attention properly and can't remember anything that's your problem.
I can see a lot of what I imagine to be high school kids complaining about exams here, and they're not that bad. If you don't like them, that's understandable, but you have to realise they are useful and necessary - they don't just make your school look good. If a school gave you a qualification based on nothing of importance that qualification would lose it's worth. And in fact, it would be in your schools interest to do that. I went to a school where if someone didn't turn up to lessons repeatedly then they wouldn't enter them for the exam - exam success is how you measure a teachers success, and it's not fair to measure a teachers success with the results of people they didn't get to teach. I think that's reasonable enough. The person who said [i]I hate timed exams[/i] - I understand how you feel, I hated that about maths too, but the problem is you, and the fact you need to practice, I mean what about all those people that come out with an A? They managed it, so you can too, and if you don't, then it's fair that that's reflected in your grade. If you can't complete it in time due to a learning difficulty, like dyslexia or dyspraxia then usually (at least in the UK) the institution can test you for that or you can get tested and get extra time on exams. Open book exams do have their place, I remember doing a statistics module for Psychology in the first year of my degree (I since changed course) and since there was a lot of formulae to remember for that module the exam was open book - bear in mind it was a Psychology course, not a Maths course - to me that makes sense. However, closed book exams, even though they do tend to be what you can remember (and I can tell you, I do forget a good 30% of what I've learnt when I've put down my pen) it's still the best way to do it. The best way to explain is to say to any of you who are in a higher or further education to look back on past exams you did and how easier they look in hindsight. Now, think of how much more difficult life would be if you still had to look up those basic principles. I'm a biology student, and I remember thinking having to remember what all the organelles do in a cell was bull, since I could look it up. But now, when we study more complicated things, that knowledge needs to be available at the top of my head. Imagine if someone said do you "Right, click on the Start menu, then click Run" and they said "...Hang on, which one's the Start Menu again, the one that says Start right? Just checking. Thought so." I know it's not a perfect metaphor, but you get the idea.
I can't even remember the last time I took an open note/book test. Writing notes helps you to remember them, and most teachers/professors recommend that you re-write your notes the night before an exam as to remember them better. Like previous posts have stated, anyone can open a book and copy the answer directly from it. But this process takes time, and some kids will spend too much time looking for an answer and not finish the rest of the test. Having closed note tests prepares you for timed tests, like the ACT or SAT, where you need to be able to answer questions quickly. I have noticed in my classes that my exams are not based on remembering single facts, but on remembering major concepts and applying them to a problem. for example, in my physics class last year, and my AP physics class this year, my teacher gives us every formula and constant that we need on a piece of paper for every test. But due to the fact that we use the equations over and over again, we end up memorizing them, which is needed, because on the AP test the multiple choice section is to be done with out equation sheet or calculator. Also, taking closed book/notes tests helps to delay the effects of Alzheimer’s.
I really couldn't care less because I ace every exam anyway And I don't even study :smug:
Why bother going to school? Everything's on Wikipedia already. :downs:
[QUOTE=yawmwen;27407219]Words[/QUOTE] Good exams actually require you to know the necessary information and [U]use it[/U].
[QUOTE=SomeRandomGuy18;27409493]I really couldn't care less because I ace every exam anyway And I don't even study :smug:[/QUOTE] Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.
[QUOTE=SomeRandomGuy18;27409493]I really couldn't care less because I ace every exam anyway And I don't even study :smug:[/QUOTE] Yeah, I didn't study for my middle school exams either.
How else would it best display that you truly know and understand the material if you can recite it from memory on demand.
Pretty much every career requires you to learn knowledge, apart from a select few.
Lets face it there is so many college and university courses now that day that require you to do nothing but repeat a bunch of information on an exam. So yeah open book exams work on subjects that require logic like maths etc but an exam like history where the answer is in a book kinda defeats the point.
I somewhat agree due to the progression of the ability to access global information, but having [i]all[/i] open book tests encourages the habit of never learning If you don't learn fundamentals then you can't expand upon past or present knowledge Think of it this way: when you're done with school, every book in the world will be open to you at all times :buddy:
That really doesn't apply to shit like calculus where if you need to know the indefinite integral of something you could just look it up in your book. You need to develop the comfort with them to do them in your sleep and blindfolded. Although I don't know what sort of handicap blindfolding really provides when you're already sleeping.
[QUOTE=coco911231;27407809]Because school is teaching you for your future career, your not always going to have a textbook with you and its much easier to pick things up just out of memory.[/QUOTE] We had to learn project organization structures. A company only decided on a different one once every few years. I can guarantee you that they won't decide based on what they can remember, but do real research. Another example: Programming exams. Every (without exceptions) programmer uses the internet and/or documentation while programming. Why can't we use notes and the internet like normal people would do. Yet another example: I had to learn the exact year when a queen came into power. I got it wrong by about 50 years and didn't get a single point even though it happened 400 years ago. I mean WHAT THE FUCK, how is that useful knowledge? Facebook's "Useless Knowledge" posts more useful info than that.
After 5 years of college, I've found that I do just as poorly on exams that are open notes that I studied poorly for as I do on closed book tests I haven't studied well either. Many teachers (with the exception of a few subjects) will give closed book tests because they [i]know[/i] that if they don't more than half the class won't study for them. Inevitably, it's more useful in the long run to learn the information completely than be stuck scrambling for a book every time someone poses a question at you. In job interviews, for instance, you might be asked questions along the lines of "how would you solve ___ problem?" You can't look it up, you've got to know an answer off the top of your head immediately.
The idea behind exams is a great one, but the way they are carried out in america makes them absolutely pointless. Okay, so exams are a way to gauge how much you've learned and of that knowledge, how much you've retained, correct? Then how the fuck are the grades for these exams valid when you spend weeks studying for them beforehand? Exams are less of a way to see how much you've learned and more of a way to see how well you can study. I mean, don't get me wrong, you still know more about the subject over which you're taking the exam than what you don't, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to ace it, because technically "knowing more about something than what you don't know about it" means that you only need to know 51% or more. 51% is not a passing grade, in spite of the fact you technically know "most of" the material you've been learning Sadly, however, there are two flaws to my logic: 1. you cannot prevent students from studying, and those who cared enough, if my logic were carried out into a viable form of exam, would study and make very high marks on their exams 2. if my logic were implemented, students wouldn't retain much less material they've learned because there would be nothing to entice them to study it I guess school in general is highly flawed, heh [editline]14th January 2011[/editline] this is why communism should prevail
[QUOTE=Moose;27407372]any retard can open a book, read it, then regurgitate the words on a piece of paper with a pen so yeah im with you there[/QUOTE] You'd think. My physics exams last quarter were open-note, open-book, open-homework, and we had 2.5 hours to do them. People were still getting 60s and 70s on them. I'm still not sure how.
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