Take Home Exams and the Cool Teachers Who Give Them

in college life by Kathy Teel — December 2, 2010 at 1:04 am | 4 comments

Exams Are Bad Enough

I give take home tests.  I’ve been doing this for a while now, and I torture myself every term wondering if it’s the right thing to do.  Of course, the students are all for it.  At least, they think they are.  And as finals approach, and they get swamped with studying for tests in every class, they are always glad that they don’t have as much stress from my class.

But I’m never sure it’s the right thing to do.  I worry about whether they will really study if they are given a take-home, open-book, open-note test.  It doesn’t matter if I spend 4 months leading up to the final by saying, “You need to be reviewing your notes.  You need to look over your chapters.  You need to review your old tests.”

I worry that my better students will become so obsessed with finding, checking, and double checking the right answer that they won’t trust the knowledge that they have in their heads.  For these students, I’m afraid that the test takes far too long and causes far too much anxiety.

The Method Behind the (Seeming) Madness

On the other hand, I almost always come back to the take home test—for both the final and intermittent tests throughout the semester.  I do this for a few reasons:

• It doesn’t help students to cram like crazy the night before a test, take the test, then promptly forget everything they learned in my class.

• My classes, especially World Religions, are very information intensive.  If there are 16 world religions, that’s 16 founders, 16 ethical systems, 16 clerical hierarchies, 16 sets of holy writings, 16 sets of feast days, 16 different calendars (do you know what year it is in China?  Islam?  Judaism?) 16 sets of gods/spirits…you get the idea.  That’s too much to memorize.

• It’s more useful for them to know where to go to get the information they need than to need it and not know where to get it.  Using notes/books during a take-home test requires students to become very familiar with their material.

• I don’t have to waste class periods administering tests.  I can use the time for lecture and discussion, and give out the test on their way out the door.  It gives me more teaching time.

• I can ask harder questions, and really get to the heart of my material, without having to worry about overwhelming them.

• Tests create anxiety and anxiety impedes learning.

So, not only have I been just plain cool all this time, but now it turns out that research into take-home tests backs up my ideas.  A recent study—the first one to measure the effectiveness of this type of exam versus traditional tests—showed that students score up to 8% higher on take-home tests.  That’s almost an entire letter grade!  They also enjoy their classes more and retain the information longer.

In light of this study and its implications for test-giving and evaluation, I know several teachers who have made the shift to take-home tests.  I still second guess my decision every semester, but it’s really nice to know that there’s science as well as instinct on my side.

Tags: anxiety finals students study teachers