Some institutions follow open book examinations.

What are its advantages?
Do you think that exams should be memory-based?


When it comes examinations different institutions follow different methods, and one such method is open book examination. But some are against it and they say examinations should to be memory-based. I think open exam has its own merits, and we need to evaluate a student in all possible ways.

First of all, let me look at the advantages. This method allows students access to books at the time of examination. The primary advantage is that it requires the student to understand the question in such a way that he is able to find out answer to it referring to a book or many books in the given time. Secondly, it encourages self study because the institution may be giving them only basic guidelines as to cover the areas of a particular subject or paper. Thirdly, the examiners have the freedom to raise any question in the exam, and the students can expect to face them too. These are some of the advantages.

Coming to should exams be memory-based, I would argue that it need not be memory based. The reasons are that memorizing does not work in today’s performance requirements, and those who are able to memories huge amount of information are book worms. And education as we all know needs to give a student varying opportunities to put him or her to test. Testing the memory is one of them, not all. Further more, when students are required to be tested for other skills like time management, problem solving, reasoning and multi-tasting in exam conditions, they become competent, competitive and industry-friendly.

These pointers make me conclude that all examinations, including open book examinations, have their own merits and demerits. However, restricting exams as some exercise that tests a student’s memorizing skill is not a good idea. Rather exams need to evaluate a student in as many ways as there are skills and potentials.


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