School has been hard enough being online, and has taken more than its average toll on students’ mental health. With another COVID-19 final exam season just around the corner, many professors may be looking for ways to up the stakes now that most exams are open-book.
If Carleton wishes to maintain its high student satisfaction ranking, it is imperative that it encourage its faculty to implement open-book evaluations, written specifically with students’ well-being in mind.
Over the last three months, attending Carleton online has definitely been an interesting experience, with more trials and tribulations than usual for both students and staff.
Note-taking, procrastination, and trying to learn the ins and outs of university have all been a part of learning to adapt to an online environment. While many of these changes may look easier than their in-person equivalents—particularly open-book exams—they can often be just as stressful and difficult.
Open-book exams in particular are often timed just like real exams. While this may not seem like the biggest deal because it is assumed you have all the information in front of you, professors often design open-book exams to be more in-depth and challenging than the average in-person exam.
For this reason, you might find yourself spending a lot more time searching through your notes for the answers, rather than simply recalling the information from memory (which, given the amount of detail often required for questions on open-book exams, isn’t feasible, anyways), giving you less time to spend on formulating your answers.
Since open-book exams are assumed to be easier and so demand a more detailed knowledge of course content, regular course engagement becomes even more intense. Students—myself included—often have to spend more time and energy taking ridiculously meticulous notes during lectures and readings, resulting in an even more stressful and unfair learning experience.
Some educators have argued that open-book exams ‘defeat the purpose of learning’ and take away from a student’s experience by making learning less of a challenge, and thus, they should be made more difficult in order to compensate.
This is simply not true. Not only do open-book exams require an equivalent, if not greater, amount of preparation compared to regular exams, it’s also been proven again and again that they can actually enhance learning in many disciplines by preparing students to use the resources they have at hand to accomplish complex tasks—as they would in the real world.
However, making exams more difficult simply because they aren’t taking place under traditional exam conditions is an unfair and unnecessary decision, and defeats the purpose of the “flexible and compassionate” evaluation mantra the university continues to boast.
Dealing with the stress of university has many students feeling burned out already. Professors should not be trying to make evaluations harder simply in accordance with their own understanding of the integrity of learning.
The lack of social interaction brought on by online school has contributed to the toll taken on students’ mental health—something that cannot be alleviated as COVID-19 cases continue to rise.
No one is saying that students are the only ones having trouble with virtual learning. We know professors and faculty members are going through their share of difficulties.
However, students have definitely been hit harder—particularly those who are already disadvantaged, like student parents. Not only are students dealing with the same pandemic-related stresses most adults are, such as financial and health-related burdens, but also must grapple with the fact that how they perform as students during COVID-19 will affect their opportunities later in life. (Not to mention the fact that professors aren’t paying to teach, while students are paying to be taught.)
While it is understandable that universities can only afford to do so much when it comes to accommodating students from all around the world, tangible steps can still be taken when it comes to making mental health a priority.
One of the things universities can do is more closely supervise the evaluations being administered, and ensure students are given the opportunity to take fairly-designed open-book exams, whenever possible. Not only can these exams be just as challenging and demonstrative of learning as their in-person equivalents, but they also provide a bit of peace of mind for students by allowing them to have their study material with them.
Featured image from file.
