Learning. Life.

Hint: they’re not as easy as you might think.

My Helpdesk students have an open book test coming up (evil laughter … more evil laughter … maniacal laughter).

I hate to tell you, but open book tests aren’t easy.

I thought might help you to know how I think about open book tests, and why I set them in my practical subjects. Remember that your other lecturers might think differently.

I set open book tests for topics which I believe you need to understand, not memorise. For example, in my Database Administration course the final test is to performance tune a large Oracle database (more evil laughter). Anyone who knows Oracle knows how easy that test will be (hint: it’s not).

Memorising the syntax of the “sar” command is not the point. What I really want to know is whether you understand how databases work, how to test database performance, and how to tune the database. So I let you look up the sar command.

Besides, it won’t help you pass the test. If you don’t understand that other stuff, you won’t be able to tune the database properly. So you won’t be able to pass the test. I designed it that way.

Sure, the underlying principles are in your notes too - so you could, possibly, teach yourself how to tune a database while actually in the test. That would be fine by me - you learn it anyway.

But, of course, you won’t have time to use your notes. Not much, anyway. If you have to look up every single step, you won’t finish the test. So if you don’t know most of the stuff anyway, you won’t pass. I designed it that way too.

In the Helpdesk course, we look at writing Helpdesk Proposals and Implementation Plans. If you were actually writing a report, I’d rather you looked up what sections it should contain. I’m really interested in whether you understand what information should go into those sections. So I might give you a scenario, and ask you to write an Implementation Plan. You can get the structure from your notes - that’s fine - but you have to understand what’s needed. The scenario contains issues that you should pick up if you understand the theory - if you’re writing off the top of your head, you probably won’t get good marks. You guessed it - I designed the question that way. I also keep the students very busy in that test, so that if they have to go to their notes for everything, they won’t finish.

I don’t do an open book test as the major assessment component: in both these courses the test is 20% of the final grade. But they’re definitely not easy. In the next post I’ll talk about how to prepare for an open book test and what sorts of questions you might expect to see.