What types of exams are best suited for your students? The answer to the question will probably depend on a number of variables. The psychology department at my university, for example, have few problems with their first-year students being evaluated based on multiple-choice tests. With a turnover at around 1000 students every year, this is probably a question of economy as much as anything else. A possible consequence for the students might be the memorization of useless facts rather than deeper understanding of the matter, something that might be indicated by the popularity of books like “the multiple choice guide” (muliple choice guiden). Other departments at NTNU have been considering the same, but I think the most common tool in the humanities and social sciences are still the exams where you sit at one location and write for a number of hours.
The last few days I’ve been grading final exams of a third type. The students taking a course in globalization theory at our department have been asked to complete an essay-style home exam, a task they had four days to complete. This kind of exam is great, I think, – it provides time for reflection. The students are given a real chance to mobilize the understanding they have gained through the course, instead of mindlessly regurgitating memorized facts from books. They can discuss, problematize, and bring their own experiences to the table, something they frequently do – and are rewarded for!
However, this type of exam also provides rather obvious challenges. For instance, access to the all-knowing internet represents a temptation, potentially hard to resist for those who seek to impress. This isn’t a challenge only for those writing the papers, but also for those grading it. How do you know that the impressive argument you consider giving an “A” isn’t just a mindless excercise in ctrl+c / ctrl+v? And once you’ve found one or two instances of this, how do you avoid becoming paranoid, thinking they’re all cheaters?
On the first question: basically, you don’t. For me these essays have been accompanied by an unsubstantiated creepy feeling of something being ‘off’ resulting in a Google query, again resulting in direct hits in journal articles or books. The worst example I’ve come across was a mash-up between an old article by Arjun Appadurai, and a new article in journal of economic ans social research. I know we live in a time of remix-culture, but for the cheaters out there: at least change a few words, huh? I mean, all people grading exams aren’t old men in beards, reading scrolls on how to perfect morse-tecnique. We know Google, for Gods sake, the cat’s out of the bag.
On the paranoia: just forget it, most of them aren’t cheaters, I think it’s that simple!