Open-book, open-web versus closed-book, closed-web examinations in anatomy and physiology classes

Abstract

Due to COVID and distance learning, a possible evaluation is open-book examinations. We tested the hypothesis that students taking open-book, open-web exams spend less time studying anatomy and physiology and would performed more poorly on critical thinking exam questions compared to students taking closed-book, closed-web exams. We tested the exam performance using different types of exam questions according to Bloom's taxonomy. As well, students that participated in the research submitted study journals that accounted for the time they spent studying for each exam. Data has been collected for both open-book, open-web and closed-book, closed-web sections over Exams #1, #2, #3, and Final. Data from Exams #1 and #2 for both sections has already been completely analyzed. Data from the open-book section had shown that students' exam performance over five different types of questions were descending as the level of difficult became more challenging in both Exams #1 and #2. Data from the closed-book section showed that as the level of difficult became more challenging, there was not a decline in performance on Exam #1 and there was a less steep decline in performance on Exam #2 than the open-book section. For both exams, there was a statistical significance between the study times of the sections as the average study times of the closed-book section was significantly greater than of that of the open-book section. These results suggest that students in the open-book section deal with challenging questions more poorly than the closed-book section while also studying significantly less than the closed-book, closed-web section. Moreover, the data for Exams #1 through Final of both sections has been collected and will be analyzed and included for further comparison. This research was supported and funded by the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Tennessee at Martin. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.