Open-book quizzes

d12 die
Originally uploaded by Waifer X.

Excerpt from the Cuesta College (San Luis Obispo, CA) Astronomy 10 course policy below. Note that students are already expected to bring their textbooks to class for reference during in-class activities (peer-instruction worksheets, similar to "Lecture-Tutorials" developed by Jeffrey P. Adams, Edward E. Prather, and Timothy F. Slater.

You are expected to bring your textbook to each class. At least one, but no more than two quizzes during a semester may be specially designated as "open book," where you will be allowed access to your own individual textbook during the quiz, but open notes are not allowed. Highlighting, underlining and short comments written in your textbook are acceptable. Lecture notes, reading guides, and other separate study materials are not acceptable. An "open book" quiz will not be announced until just before the start of a quiz. You should be prepared to answer all quiz questions regardless of whether or not you have access to a textbook, and regardless of whether a quiz is "open book" or not. Time spent to retrieve a textbook from outside the classroom during a quiz will be considered time during the 15 minutes allotted to take the quiz. The intent of this practice is to encourage individual ownership and accountability, and to emphasize the importance of utilizing the textbook effectively as a learning resource.

Since there are 12 scheduled quizzes during the semester, a 12-sided die is used for a volunteer student to "roll" for an open-book quiz for the class. The first three quizzes for the semester are always closed-book (as they focus on spatial relationships in determining diurnal, lunar, and planetary positions and motions in the celestial sphere), and midterms are also always closed-book.

The die is cast in the minute just before the start of a quiz, and is done on an ELMO overhead presenter, such that the rest of the class can witness the result. If the die roll (1-12) produces a number that is more than the quiz number, then that quiz is closed-book, and closed-notes. If the die roll produces a number that is less than the quiz number, then that quiz is open-book, but is still closed-notes, and no handouts nor study guides are allowed. Highlighted text and handwritten notes in the textbook are allowed. The probability of an open-book quiz steadily increases from Quiz 4 (4/12) to an almost certainty by Quiz 12 (12/12). However, there is only a maximum of two open-book quizzes are allowed per semester; once there have been two open-book quizzes, there is no more opportunity to roll for another.

Many students realize that they should not depend on a quiz being open-book, and should have studied and mastered the material on their own. Some also realize that access to their textbook during a quiz is a crutch, that can be detrimental to their time management if they rely on looking up the answer to every question. As the emphasis of this course is on understanding concepts and applying analytical reasoning, the multiple choice questions on quizzes are deliberately constructed to test skills in weighing evidence and supporting conclusions, and not on facts that can be memorized by rote, or looked up by scanning summary boxes, the glossary, or the index of a textbook.

Education research on the difference between sections that have open-book or closed-book quizzes may be done in following semesters.