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Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

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Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#51

Post by BrenBarn »

wrp wrote: post #30

Survey question: To what extent did blue book exams go away? When I started out (and the original Van Halen was still together), blue book exams were the norm in humanities classes. I've had narrow experience with American undergrad classes the past 25 years, so I don't have a feeling for how things have evolved.

I'm not sure, but I used them as recently as 2019. (Well, not a blue book per se, but a printed exam where students handwrote their answers on the provided sheets.) I'm pretty sure some faculty never stopped using them except when forced to by online classes. (Incidentally, increased pressure to offer more online classes is a worrisome combination with increased AI-aided cheating.)

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#52

Post by armchairhacker »

Syzygies wrote: post #36

One can't have an informed opinion on this without witnessing how grading a college exam takes place, first hand. Grading a stack of blue books is a "just kill me now" brutal experience. A majority of cognitive effort is just finding the page for the next problem to grade, with finding the answer another delay; any programming language with this kind of access latency would stay a "one bus" language. So of course pro…

It doesn’t have to be a book, it can be a cheap laptop without internet.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#53

Post by pessimizer »

nxobject wrote: post #8

As someone whose college papers always went through multiple drafts, I genuinely hope that the "joy" the author feels doesn't get in the way of teaching writing skills. And, as someone who got paid minimum wage to proctor tests in college, I couldn't keep a straight face at this: > The most cutting-edge educational technology of the future might very well be a stripped-down computer lab, located in a welcoming campus…

> I think the author's leaning heavily on vibes to do the convincing here.

I have no idea what you're trying to express in your comment, so who's using vibes?*

Were you triggered by the word "caring?" A waiter usually cares that the people they're serving have an enjoyable meal. It doesn't mean that they love them, it means that they think the work of feeding people is purposeful and honest (and theirs.)

-----

[*] It's certainly not in the words; I don't know what made you angry about "joy," I don't know why you think the author does not teach writing skills in "communications," I don't know why the fact that you went through multiple drafts in writing school papers is relevant or different than anyone else's experience. Maybe that's over now. Maybe I actually don't care if you use AI for your second and further drafts, if I know you can write a first draft.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#54

Post by ipcress_file »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #43
ipcress_file wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never stopped using them, with the exception of the pandemic year, when we were forced to run online exams. Why replace a system that generally works well with one that introduces additional potential problems?

Same here. Online instruction / learning can work for some people, and that's good. I don't understand how anyone ever thought that an online exam could be made secure. There's just no way to ensure that the person who registered for the course is the one taking the exam when you don't control anything about the hardware or location, when students have a wide variety of hardware that you must support, and any attempt…

I get it. My major concern was that students were cheating online (nearly 50% if I was detecting them all) who I didn't think would have cheated in the classroom. I didn't like the idea that we were creating a situation that enticed students to cheat.

That being said, the whole experience had an impact on my generally optimistic view of human nature.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#55

Post by lokar »

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #3

How do blue book exams translate to real world problems the students will encounter? Why not open book + AI use exams, because that's what students will have in their careers?

So we just give up on direct reading comprehension and critical thinking?

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#56

Post by lokar »

benbreen wrote: post #10
xqcgrek2 wrote: post #3

How do blue book exams translate to real world problems the students will encounter? Why not open book + AI use exams, because that's what students will have in their careers?

Exactly, this is the reason why I struggle with this sort of solution to the problems we are all facing in education currently. On the surface it seems to make sense, but the blue book exam is entirely artificial and has basically no relationship to real world skills (subconsciously, even the quality of student handwriting handwriting could influence how graders assess blue books). Even leaving AI aside, anyone writi…

As a CS student I rather enjoyed the blue book essay exams in my classics courses.

And it did teach and evaluate skills I’ve used me entire career.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#57

Post by girvo »

SoftTalker wrote: post #17
sarchertech wrote: post #2

This is the obvious solution to chatgpt essays. You could also just add more lab sections to CS classes, and force students to do assignments with no access to AI. When I took physics we had weekly 3.5 hour lab sections. That should be enough for most CS assignments.

The lab sections were enough time to run the experiments. Writing up the lab report took additional time outside of that, at least that's how my lab sections went in school.

Yep, absolutely the case for my labs.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#58

Post by girvo »

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #3

How do blue book exams translate to real world problems the students will encounter? Why not open book + AI use exams, because that's what students will have in their careers?

For the same reason I wasn’t allowed my extremely powerful SAT solver calculator in my maths exams (for high school and first year uni where it would’ve helped):

Because I was demonstrating that I understood the material intrinsically, not just knew how to use tools to answer it.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#59

Post by zero_shift »

benbreen wrote: post #10
xqcgrek2 wrote: post #3

How do blue book exams translate to real world problems the students will encounter? Why not open book + AI use exams, because that's what students will have in their careers?

Exactly, this is the reason why I struggle with this sort of solution to the problems we are all facing in education currently. On the surface it seems to make sense, but the blue book exam is entirely artificial and has basically no relationship to real world skills (subconsciously, even the quality of student handwriting handwriting could influence how graders assess blue books). Even leaving AI aside, anyone writi…

Not sure how it is these days, but at Cambridge, supervisions (what Oxford calls tutorials) did not contribute to our examination / tripos scores. They were just a learning aid.
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