Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Wed Jun 23 17:06:59 2004

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
> I'm not sure if I agree with the current trend toward open book exams -
> yes, in the real world, chances are you will have reference material
> handy. But the current attitude of most people I've known who have taken
> such exams is that they don't need to actually know anything, because
> they can just bluff their way through it in an exam by reading the book
> and get sufficient marks to pass.

If a closed-book exam is offered open-book, then that is the case.
A test that is all about memorization is useless in an open book
format.
The exam needs to be different according to the format.
An open book test must be written to test application of
knowledge instead of memorization.

for example:
How many bits are used for a single precision IEEE floating point number?
is only appropriate for closed-book

int N = 10;
while (N--) printf("&d\n",N);
What are the first and last numbers displayed?
is appropriate for open-book.

> Then these people go out into the real world and they can't think for
> shit - as soon as an oddball problem hits them they're just incapable of
> working it through to a solution as they're too used to just being able
> to read the answer in a book right when they need it.

Then these people go out into the real world and they can't think for
shit - as soon as an oddball problem hits them they're just incapable of
working it through to a solution as they've forgotten everything that
they memorized.


> I know I'm perhaps a little younger than the average age of people on
> this list, but I feel I was one of the last generation who was lucky
> enough to do an old-style degree course. We had access to real (and
> diverse) systems rather than things being emulated, and we were given a
> lot of grounding theory in the way things actually worked, and more
> importantly we weren't given an easy ride - no such thing as an open
> book exam then, no whizzy graphical tools to do half the work for us
> etc.

In my day, we didn't have the option of using a calculator.
Did that help or hurt? Are the aspects that it helped or hurt
relevant to what is being tested?

In my day, we were to supply our own scratch paper for standardized tests,
including graph paper. We were not allowed to bring in sliderules,
but there was no rule against making one during the test!

OTOH, in the UC Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems,
I was the first student ever to use a word processor for the PhD
written exams. I managed to convince them that grading
penmanship was no longer valid.


> I'm amazed at how often the fundamentals that we were taught have helped
> me work some problem out - and I've lost track of how many of the later
> generations of graduates I've had to deal with who just can't think
> properly because all they've been taught is how to push a mouse around a
> screen.

How many current students can find a square root without a sqrt or x^y key
on a calculator?

How many even know the square root of 2 and 3?

I even get some who have been TAUGHT that pi is EXACTLY 22/7.
(I got in major trouble when I was 10 years old for telling the teacher
that pi was not 22/7)

> industry on the surface of things think they want. I do wonder quite
> where things will be in ten years when there's almost nobody left who
> can actually think for themselves though...
> Anyway, rant over :-)

mine is just beginning.
Received on Wed Jun 23 2004 - 17:06:59 BST