In class or take-home exams?

Thus far, in my non-seminar courses, I have always given in-class, three hour essay exams, and I've gotten handwritten answers in law school provided Bluebooks.  I should point out quickly that when I was a law student, I handwrote all of my in-class final exams, and I have pretty bad handwriting, so in a way, I am getting just desserts.

My exams are open-book with regard to class notes, the casebook, and outlines.  It wouldn't be too much of a step for me to give a take-home exam, in which case I would get back nicely laser-printed answers.  I've resisted so far for the following reasons:

1) Some mild concern that not everyone has access to a computer, though I suppose that person could always handwrite an answer.  Plus, my sense is that there are very few, if any, students who wouldn't be able to access a computer in some way (whether through the law library, or a friend).

2) Greater concern about disadvantaging students with family responsibilities.  I suppose that a time period of 24 hours would address this from a practical perspective, since I think any time spent beyond the first four or five hours is probably of minimal value; but I suspect that students would always feel that someone who could devote 18-20 hours would have an advantage.

3) Some compassion for students who would otherwise feel compelled to spend all their free time on the take home exam.  At least with a three hour in-class exam, students know that when the 180 minutes are up, they're done.

I'm curious whether readers have any thoughts on the merits of in-class vs. take-home.  Are my concerns valid?  Are they of lesser importance than the advantages of typing at home?  (Yes, I realize that allowing the use of computers via test-taking software is a possible solution, but there are issues involved there as well.)

Comments

[jc]

all of your concerns are valid, particularly the third one (they will spend every last second on it). in fact, after surveying fellow students/graduates - they all said to a person that take homes were unpleasant because when graded on the curve and knowing everyone has 24 hours, there is tremendous pressure to work on it even more, to the detriment of other tests. the first concern is the least, because all students have access through the law library computer lab, although it costs $$ to print, but not much.

other issues:
1) greater risk of plagiarism (sp?) - i.e., collaboration, etc.
2) less likely to study material if think they have more time - thus will learn less of the material for the long term

ALSO - your main goal - better handwriting might be able to be attained if Iowa would catch up with the technology curve and let students use laptops to take exams.

[Stef]

As an adult college student, I would likely be at an extreme disadvantage with a 24 hour take home test. I live 40 minutes from campus. That almost two hours right there including walking to the room to pick up/drop off my exam. I have a 17 month old, which means I can't put off feeding, bathing, etc, just because I have an exam. Let's call that 4 hours. Although I spend more time than that with my son, there are times when I can work while hes playing cntently by himself. I have a full-time job, which takes away about 11 hours, including the standard 8 hour day, driving to-and-fro, loitering at the day care provider's house, and lunch, which usually consists of a meeting someone couldn't get in during the normal work day. And I need a minimum of four hours sleep or else I'm nuts. In a 24 hour period, I might have about 3 hours time to complete the exam, so I'm no better off than if I sat in class and took the three hour exam.
But that's me.
Stefanie

[belinda]

As a law student, I always hated take-home exams. I much preferred simply to get the test over with and be done with it. B/c of this feeling, I probably did not put in as much time as many of my classmates did on take-homes (I think the longest I ever worked on one was maybe 8 hours in a 24-hour period), so maybe I was better off in the end. While I may have felt somewhat guilty for not putting in the time, I was pretty well rested. In any case, I'm not really sure having all the extra time really made much of a difference in any case, b/c I generally stuck with the answers I came up with at the outset, and just used the extra time to polish, etc.

[tom]

Stef--if you could share any insights on how to get a child to play contently by himself, I would appreciate it.

[Matt]

#1, while a good point, isn't really that big of a concern, because, as you said, pretty much every student has access to a computer either at home or through the law school itself, though computer labs are often crowded at exam time.

#2 can be abated with the process several professors of mine had, which was "sign out your exam any time during the exam period during normal business hours M-Th. Sign the exam back in within 24 hours." This lets a person choose when they want those 24 hours, be it because of other exams, family issues, etc.

#3 is a very good point, and there's no way around it, but as you point out (and I agree) more than 3-4 hours on an exam really doesn't help you.

Most of my exams both in law school and undergrad were take-home, though it was a little more common in undergrad because I went to a school with a very strict Honor Code, which meant exams were usually passed out and then we just dropped them off three hours later. We could take them in the computer lab, in our dorm room, at a local bar, or anywhere we wanted, as long as we abided by the rules set by the professor.

[Kris]

My two cents:

1) Given the computers in the law library and elsewhere on campus, I think you can safely assume everyone has access to a computer. If not, it can be handwritten.

2) and 3) Seem like corrollary points to me - how much time will a given student spend on the test? Will they feel compelled to spend 8 hours because they have a 24-hour period? Or will they feel disadvantaged because they can't spend the 8 hours because of family commitments? I feel that both these are somewhat valid concerns: yes, having been there and done that, you do feel pressure to pull an all-nighter on the test. You wonder who else has spent what kind of time on it, and whether you will have measured up. On the other hand, you have other tests to study for. You generally have some form of employment commitment to fulfill, and possibly a relationship with some sort of significant other to sustain (though I felt all bets were off during finals and the bar exam). So no one will be spending 24 hours on the test. Is is unfair to those with a family? Not any more so than it is to those with a job, or two finals the same week. I don't think you can take away all the factors that can disadvantage people.

4) I need to make a slight disclaimer: I only got to take two take-home exams during my entire time there at UI, and I LOVED them. My grades were significantly higher, because I didn't have the time pressure that caused me to panic during most normal exams. I could, and did, treat it like a paper. As an English undergrad, papers were my *thing*. I could DO them. And while most people said the in-class thing was to test your ability to think under pressure, aren't most briefs and motions actually done more like take-homes?

Anyway, that's my rambling take on it.

[muteKevin]

Usually, I prefer the three hour exams because they are much shorter and the expectations of the professors are generally lower (because of the time constraints). As a student, I'd prefer to "get it over with" in a 3-hour block rather than drag it for a whole 8-hours, or worse, a full 24-hours.

Personally, I disdain take home exams, for the very reason that I know classmates will spend 100% of the time on the exam while I generally "give up" at around the 6 hour mark. As a 1L, I had one 8-hour "take home" where most people just stayed in the library because students were afraid of eating up too much of their time commuting. In fact, some people didn't even get up out of their seats during that time for ANY reason.

Perhaps a 24-hour exam might alleviate some of these concerns, but as a student I feel like there's less an expectation of an exam at that point and more of an expectation of a paper being written within a day.

Plus, from the professor's angle, with a 3-hour exam you'll have less to grade... =P

[Sarah]

The time factor is important, I think. Given enough time, even the ones who did little preparation and have a meagre appreciation for the subject will be able to scrape enough words together to satisfy the question.

But real life does not give you that much time. You have to be prepared, you have to have a good grasp of the subject and you have to be able to think on your feet and know which cases to reference and which would be most relevant to the issue at hand.

Plus, 3 hour in-class exams remove the temptation to collude, confer, whatever you want to call it.

Re: the handwriting issue. The school should be providing el-cheapo laptops for exams. When our organization discovered that there were 250 386's sitting in a warehouse, brand new but now trailing edge technology, they loaded them up with a word processing program and made them available for note-taking and exams. No temptation to steal them; practically useless except for word processing.

And easier on the prof's eyes and temper.

[Jinn]

I bet as a professor you have already acquired a nose for when someone has reached the end of their knowledge and is blowing smoke, so why encourage that behavior by giving more time? If it is an analysis-based problem, there's a point at which all discussion options have been exhausted. Giving more time beyond that is begging students to add things that don't relate or give too much information.

I second the advice that the law school get with the times. Here at this law school, laptops were required, and all in-class exams have the option of being taken with ExamSoft (about 4-5% still handwrite).

#3 is my main reason I wish all my professors would do in class exams. I like to know when I'm done.

[A. Rickey]

Prof. Yin:

My one take-home exam thus far in law school was hell on toast. A 24-hour take-home, I literally worked 22 of the 24 hours on it. I do think the extra time helps: I spent the last four not really making any new substantive argument, but polishing, editing, and making sure that there weren't any "annoyances" to distract the Prof from my points. That old saying that "Great papers aren't written, they're edited" doesn't apply any less for exams: if you can spend the extra time, all else equal the product will be better, and if you're on a brutal curve, that will count.

I really don't think a take-home is an act of mercy in any way, whatever the justification.

[Jack]

I'm out of law school 18 years, and am amazed that they do not yet require that students have computers. There are liberal arts colleges with such a requirement, so I would think that any professional school, especially one catering to a profession for which the use of a computer is an absolute requirement, would simply assume that all students have computers.

Open book exams feed the competition among the students. If you have 24 hours to write such an exam, you are going to feel as though you are leaving a lot of time on the table if you do not spend at least ten of those hours working on the damned test. In that regard, they are more painful for the student.

You might well ask, who cares? The open-book exam burden is a teeny-weeny fraction of the work one faces as a lawyer -- perhaps if law school had pushed me harder I wouldn't have been so shocked as a first year associate.

It seems to me that the real issue relates to cognitive style, and whether you want to cater to one over another. Timed exams, open-book timed exams, and take-home exams all test different things. Some students are advantaged by timed exams, but others will produce the best work when there is time to deliberate. A good law school should impose some of each. All of one without the other advances the interests of one type of thinker over the others.

[Jennifer]

I'm halfway through law school and I've taken what seems like an almost equal number of in-class and take-home exams.

With in-class exams, knowledge of the material and preparation are key. There's a certain satisfaction in writing everything you can for three hours and then walking away.

Take-home exams frustrate me because the most recent ones I have taken (one I should be working on right now) expect and encourage collaboration and extensive research, thus requiring more work and taking away from preparation for in-class exams. I've never taken a 24-hour exam, but it sounds better than having three weeks to fret over the writing and research and polishing of a traditional take-home.

I'd much rather take in-class exams.

[Karlo]

If it were me, I'd be very concerned about collaboration and the perception of students that other students might be collaborating.

[Heidi]

I've only had one take-home exam, and it was 32 hours, not 24. Every moment of the exam was more relaxed than the moments of in-class exams, but there were so many more moments that I was stressed. I had a hard time sleeping that night, not because I had things to do, but because I kept thinking of ways to make it better, better, better! I have a 24 hour and an 8 hour take-home this time around, so maybe I'll have more data later.

[Kyle Kaiser]

Oh goodness, the debate will never end! I had very few takehomes (probably because of the issues you mentioned). I would suggest NOT having a 24 hour test-- because then it really can become a marathon, and students feel like they're expected to write a term paper or a law review note in 24 hours rather than do what it seems you want them to do -- relay what they know about the topic but in a more organized, and more legible manner.
Both of my takehomes at the College of Law (Prof. Bibas and Prof. Janis) were timed-- I believe one was 4 hours and one was 5 hours. Both professors stated, I believe, that the exam could be finished in three hours, leaving 1-2 hours for proofreading/traveling. But people with timed takehomes got priority for the computers in the library, I believe, so commuters would not have to travel if they so chose. (I could have gone home, as I lived on Oakcrest St., but I didn't want to be distracted by ANYTHING in my apartment, so I took one of the tests in the Law Review office.)
I did very well on one and not so well (average, which for me was one of my lowest grades) on the other. I personally didn't like them because the more restrictive the constraints, the better I did on exams, generally. But that doesn't mean the take homes were bad. In fact, they were both quite good (although HARD... but I think that had more to do with the profs...). So if all you really want to do is allow your students to type the exam and present their ideas in a more organized fashion than is usually found in the "stream of consciouness" bluebooks (or sans arrows and inserts) then I would suggest a shorter timed test. BUT make SURE that the test can be SATISFACTORILY answered in about 80% of the time that you give.
I think that alleviates much of the concerns above. First, you don't have people working for 18 hours. Second, there's no disadvantage to people with families (if they could have blocked off four hours for a four credit, in-class exam, they could block off that time for a "takehome"). Don't worry about people who don't have access to computers. Unless the College of Law has REALLY gone down in the last two years, there would be enough computers on campus for everyone to work.
Good luck!
~kjk

[Kyle Kaiser]

Oh, and another way to equalize the playing field is to put a (reasonable) word limit on the answers. That way, even if you do decide to give an 8-hour or 24-hour exam, the workaholics would just be spinning their wheels on revisions, which wouldn't be that helpful anyway. Plus, the word limit levels the playing field between people who can type 75 words per minute and those who can only type 25. AND it helps to give the test-taker an idea of the scope of the problem. (I see that, because the question is limited to 500 words, the professor does not want in-depth analysis of every issue I can spot--I should talk about the important one and then perhaps mention the minor issues....)
I wouldn't worry about any cheating. Most law students know that they can't trust their neighbor's paper anyway, and while cooperation on issue spotting or structure may be beneficial, most students are way too wired at the time to even consider such a move (notwithstanding the ethical implications).

As an Iowa 1L who just took his first 24 hour exam, I'll say to you - if you give 24 hour exams I will NEVER take any of your classes. NEVER EVER EVER EVER!

[Art Van Delay]

I just finished a 6 hour take home exam and thought I should ramble for a while about this issue

I echo the concerns of the IL who just posted. I hated the 24 hour exam I took. I felt it was designed to take 10 hours minimum to complete. That is a lot of time when you have multiple other finals to prepare for. Perhaps I am skeptical of the reasons given for a 24 time period (allowing for commuting, children etc) because I have none of those problems...but we are in law school...I think everyone comes here planning on an outrageous time commitment and I don't know why professors should have to tip toe around some of these issues. Anyone should be able to arrange to have 6 hours of distraction free work time no matter what your situation is.

However, the 24 hour time period does not seem to solve the problem of family situations etc if those people also feel they need to spend 22 hours on the exam to match the others...they certainly can not reschedule those commitments for an entire 24 hour period if they can not find 6 hours of time to take a short take home test.

At first I was bothered by the fact that people really did spend 22 hours working on these tests, now I think that is ridiculous. Maybe that is just settling into law school and being less worried about what others do. I just see it as their loss. People are deceiving themselves if they really think the 15th edit is buying them that jump from a 75 to an 83.
The 6 hour exam was fine though. Yes it is more time than a 3 hour test but I actually had time to think about my answer and say something coherent. Additionally, there would really not be time to collaborate b/c all the time is spent writing...I don't think I would have gotten much from cheating, even if I were inclined to. I did not think either of my take home tests encouraged collaboration.

[m]

Am I in the minority on this?

I think take-home exams are, in many cases, far better than in-class ones, particularly for classes that deal in a lot of legal philosophy or policy considerations (as opposed to straight up application of rules, like an evidence class). They have been far more relaxed for me than the in-class ones, been more legible, better polished, etc.

The take-home exams I've written have all had page or word limits, which has really alleviated the pressure to work constantly. Even when I did have the exam out for the whole eight or 24 hours (I've done them both ways) I was able to knock out the rough outline of my answers in an hour or so, make some coffee, think, fill in the blanks in a couple hours more, make some lunch, pet my cat, alleviate some stress, edit the hard copy, pare down to fit the page or word constraints, check some email, give it one last once over, and bring it back in. Easy-peasy. I don't work constantly on them, but I do have time to mull things over and provide more thoughtful responses. I've done really well on the take homes I've written though, so perhaps I'm a little biased - though I've got to say, even if my takehome scores had been right in line with my in-class scores, I believe I would still prefer to take an exam home.

As for family constraints, there are lots of computers around campus, most of which are pretty quiet (or, if they get loud, it's nothing a pair of earplugs or headphones couldn't drown out). A tip for UI students, though: your student computer fees include free print credit you can use at any computer on campus - except those at the law school. For some reason, they don't allow you to use your free print credit, and make you pay for it, which I find singualrly irritating. If you were to go to the main library or weeg or the IMU or Papajohn (or anywhere else, really) you could print for free and have far more computers than are in the BLB basement.

To previous poster:

"Easy-peasy"

Watch your language during this time of the year. If you said those words in my presence I would probably cause you serious bodily injury.

[Rob]

Ah, the blessings of a take home exam. I remember my first one with Bibas, an 8 hour exam on Criminal law. I worked for a solid 6 1/2 hours on that thing, and was really satisified with my answer, and then did a word count. I was at 4000 words. Sadly, the limit was 3000. It really hurts to delete a quarter of your answer in an hour. The first edit was simply a good edit, getting rid of lots of useless language and poorly made points. The second edit really polished the piece. That wasn't enough. The third edit I started to lose grade points, as I was having to delete the minor issues that I just didn't have the time to figure out how to reword within the limit. After all that, I was still about 50 words over, so I did a search for all words ending in "-ly" and got rid of them. Who needs adjectives after all?

Now, while I was far more careful on my second take home exam in respecting the word limit as I wrote, the other problem I had was the burnout factor. Maybe I'm just a law school whuss, but working on a paper for 8 hours really sucks up the energy. My normal pattern after a 3-4 hour exam was to take a couple of hours off, enjoy lunch, clear my mind of all that I missed, and then refocus on the next exam. That usually meant I could get in a good 8 hours of study for the next test (which was usually the next day). With a take home exam, there is no such luxury. You spend most of the day working on that, and then try to immediately refocus on the next subject. I could never really do that, and the test that followed the take home was my worst grade of the semester. I didn't mind the marathon working on the exam, but having to switch gears to get ready for the test the next day was really difficult.

I never had a 24 hour take home, but I hope you include a bullet with the test, .44 caliber would do, as a quick death sounds so much better.

Rob

I go to U Chicago, where we have two types of exams: 2-4 hour (usually 3) in-class, and 8-hour "take-home" (which in practice ends up meaning take it somewhere in the building for most students). I've only had one take-home, and there was a 4000-word limit on it; I turned it in after five hours and did quite well.

I don't think your concern about exam software for in-class exams with a laptop is really valid. Our standard in-class exams are all taken on laptop computers using whatever word processor the student wants; we either turn in a disk or go to the print lab immediately after the exam. Since pretty much all the exams are open-book, there's no real worry about cheating; the few professors who give closed-book exams either rely on the honor system to ensure people don't look at notes or give non-laptop exams (though I've only heard of this in a few classes like corporate finance where you arw working on discrete problems).

Between in-class and take-home I vastly prefer in-class; to me the extra time didn't buy anything useful, but I know plenty of people who don't work as fast as I do who love take-homes. Between a hand-written in-class and a typed take-home, though, I'll take a take-home any day.

[g]

I guess I'm also in the minority that like 24 hour take home exams. I guess not being a 1L anymore, I don't really worry too much about the few students that uses the full 24 hours taking the exam. All of my 24 hour exams so far have also had word limits, which, as mentioned above, discourages such behavior. I like it because I'm more relaxed when writing the exam, knowing that if I blank on a question, I can always take a break to clear my mind and have plenty of time to come back to think about the question again. If I were taking an in-class exam, I'd feel pressured to quickly think of a solution, which sometimes leads me to panic and just put down a bunch of rubbish just so that I'd keep making progress on the exam.

[Brian]

As a 1L at UNM who just finished my first round of exams, (all in-class, 1- 2 hour, 2 - 3 hour, and 1 3 1/2 hour) I can honestly tell you that it would not bother me one bit to have a take-home exam. I would like it if we were told pick up anytime after 8 am and have it back by 5, with a word limit. I think I would do better that way because when I am writing a paper, and hit a mind blank, I get up and walk around, either pacing the floor or a lap around the building. I can' do that when I have to sit in a classroom.

I'll do what they tell me, but if given the choice, I'll take it with me and have it back at the specified time.

[Chris]

I have had a huge range of testing styles (in-class closed, in-class open, 8 hour take home, 24 hour take home, 3 day take home) and I prefer the 7-8 hour take home. It allows you to process the information better and produce answers that reflect more accurately how much you know and how well you can analyze the material. This way no spends an insane amount of time on it. I just took one this semester and chose to work on it at school so there was no issue with driving time. However, one way to get around that is to e-mail the test out at a certain time and then require that it be e-mailed back by 4 pm to the registrar and that hard copy has to be in by 5 pm or first thing the next morning.