Last spring, as I was preparing for a new semester, I had an epiphany: Closed-book exams seem to unfairly aid students who excel at memorization. So I decided to allow my classes to use notes during exams. My big takeaway: Open-note tests benefit students.
My epiphany happened as I was thinking about how I had prepared for exams as an undergraduate. I was an excellent test-taker. I took thorough notes, reviewed them after class, did the assigned readings (all good learning strategies supported by research), and studied for hours before an exam, literally memorizing information. As an instructor, I realized that memorization — a useful ability I excelled at as a theater student learning scripts — was a skill that a lot of my students might not have.
Apart from a desire to not test my students on their ability to memorize, I believed that open-note exams would allow them to practice an essential job skill — integrating information from a variety of sources to solve problems. In the case of my courses, that problem was an exam. I teach journalism, a field built on synthesizing reporting and research into stories. Wouldn’t it be better, I thought, to have students prepare notes (combine, edit, and rearrange) for an exam than expect them to do what few of us have to do in work life — memorize everything?
I made the switch based more on instinct than research. But scholarship on teaching does support the benefits of open-note exams. Some research favors a mixed approach — for example, giving students open-note exams but then following up at the end of the semester with a closed-note exam to test their recall. One study concluded that open-note exams work best at testing higher-level learning, such as problem-solving, and referenced an earlier study that said multiple-choice tests, with or without notes, were a poor way to assess student learning.
Nevertheless, I opted to give open-note, multiple-choice exams in two of my courses, because both have large enrollments and I have only one teaching assistant for each. A 300-level course I teach on visual communication relies on four semester projects in which students must apply concepts and skills they’ve learned during the course. Two exams reinforce the knowledge required to complete the projects. A 100-level survey course I teach on media theory and history has several hundred students each fall. Some of my test questions for that intro course straight-up assess whether they wrote down key information from my lecture slides, while other questions require students to connect concepts with examples.
I didn’t dictate what kind or how many notes students could bring to class for an exam. My one requirement: They could bring only notes — no textbooks, no printouts of my lecture slides (which I don’t post but do provide if students miss class). Students also had to bring their notes on paper, not on electronic devices.
What surprised me: Test grades last spring were not uniformly better than they had been on my previous closed-note exams. That experience, it turns out, is consistent with studies on open-note tests. Some students assume that open-note exams will be easier, so they spend less time preparing than they would to take closed-note tests, for which “studying” usually means “memorizing.”
In raise-your-hand surveys, a lot of students in both courses said they had experience taking open-note exams in high school and preferred that format because it lowered their test anxiety. That makes sense, and research also supports that conclusion. But the open-note format also may make students overconfident.
My experience with open-note tests brought another epiphany: Students need to be taught how to prepare for an open-note exam, and that training needs to be reinforced throughout the semester. For faculty members considering switching their exams to this format, here are some lessons learned from my experience, and research about how to help students succeed with open-note tests:
Clarify your test policies early on, in class and on the syllabus. Don’t just tell students they will be able to use their notes on exams. Explain what “open-note” means in the context of your class, and what kind of notes they can (and can’t) use. In my courses, I allow students to use notes they’ve taken on the readings, but they can’t bring the articles or textbooks to the exam.
In encouraging my students to take notes while they do the assigned readings, I explain that research shows people are more likely to retain what they write down, especially when they write on paper. Taking notes on readings also reinforces the work skill of extracting relevant information from research.
Guide students on effective study habits. Help students understand the importance of reviewing their notes after class and of “spaced learning,” i.e., doing classwork at spaced-out intervals and not just in one sitting. Research on spaced learning has focused mostly on recall of concrete facts, but one study tested the ability of students to solve math problems. It found that students who spread out four practice problems — in two sessions, a week apart — remembered how to do the work better than did students who completed all four problems in one session.
Memorizing isn’t required for open-note exams. But students need to know that reviewing information so that it can marinate over time will help them retrieve what they need from their notes during an exam.
Stress the importance of note preparation for exams. Last spring, how much effort students put into preparing notes varied considerably. As my students were taking their first open-note exam, I walked around the room and saw a wide range of notes they had prepared. Some had brought just the raw notes they’d taken in class; others had reorganized and typed their notes.
While I had no way to correlate the different approaches with exam scores, my observation was that students who had reorganized and edited their notes were able to use them more efficiently during tests. I had provided a review session before the exam, and students who had reorganized and rewritten their notes told me they had done so based on my review session.
This year I plan to stress that, to do well on open-note exams, students will need to:
- Take good notes both in class and after class, when they’re doing the reading.
- Review their notes after class.
- Reorganize and edit their notes to help them find what they need to know more quickly.
I will stress that reorganizing and editing their notes is what it means to “study” for an open-note test, and that doing so will probably give them a deeper understanding of the source material. (Indeed, researchers who conducted a 2022 study of student performance on open-note biology exams found that students who had prepared notes did better on exams than did peers who had not, and also improved their learning.)
I also need to provide a study guide and review session to enable students to prepare their notes so they will reflect what’s most likely to be on the exam.
Finally, I plan to emphasize that students are developing a highly useful work skill when they do those preparations for an open-note exam. Many jobs these days require synthesizing information from a variety of sources (interviews, surveys, studies, focus groups) in much the same way that preparing notes for an exam does.
Open-note exams became more common during the pandemic as a way to discourage cheating on online exams. The rationale: When students are allowed to refer to their notes, they have less need to cheat. But I believe this test format has earned a place in our in-person teaching, too. Among the many benefits: It lowers test anxiety, requires students to integrate information, and promotes deeper learning than does “cramming,” which thwarts long-term memory.
As a colleague put it: “I would never give anything but open-note exams. Otherwise, you’re just testing people on their ability to memorize.”
