The Ministry of Human Resources Development’s insistence, based on new University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines, that final year examinations in all universities and institutions be held in spite of the risk posed by COVID-19, has also led to a debate on open book examinations. Do open book examinations offer a way out of the student evaluation crisis thrown up by the pandemic? Ramakrishna Ramaswamy and Yoginder K. Alagh tell G. Ananthakrishnan that there is a need for a lot of preparatory work. Edited excerpts:
Do we need final year examinations at this point when the pandemic is on?
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: Given the scale of Delhi University (DU) alone, they have to find some way of evaluation especially to give credible degrees to students at this time. But this open book format may not be the wisest one. University final exams are usually highly centralised whereas the teaching is decentralised.
The question to ask is, do we really need a centralised exam? I personally think it is not necessary. The students are from individual colleges and have individual teachers. For this particular crisis, the solutions have to factor in what the local students have done. I am a believer in decentralisation, because education is something where a teacher interacts with a student and it is taught in a very local manner. In the crisis that we are going through, trying to find a solution like this is insensitive. There are many students without access to the Internet.
In the long run, we can come up with other solutions.
Y.K. Alagh: As far as Delhi University is concerned, I think there will be a few students who will face problems. DU also has religious denominational colleges, they give admission to poorer students. They may not have facilities with which to join the examination systems.
More generally, I think it is a good idea to move to an open book examination system. But open book examination systems need different kinds of educational systems. When we were studying in the University of Pennsylvania, we used to have open book examinations. The professor would come once every hour, leave the book with you and the question. Our whole educational system virtually gives answers and guidebooks, so the student prepares and repeats what he gets. On the other hand you are now talking of a system that encourages thinking, with the book only a thing that you begin with.
What are the positives for an open book system?
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: What we have frequently done at JNU — I have taught Physics there — is to have open books and open notes, but these have to be reasonably closely monitored. This allows a student to prepare and take an exam without relying on memory. So, this memorisation of things that Prof. Alagh also alluded to, that you read a guidebook, you memorise everything and spill it out, the fear that you will forget something is completely removed.
But an open book exam goes with a different style of teaching and the open book exam itself has to be administered to a small classroom. It is not something that you can think of applying to 20,000 students.
The reform that I would like to see is, start trusting the universities a little more. The UGC should not be telling the universities to go for either an open book [system], or multiple choice [system] or what have you. Let the university take a decision based on its resources, its capacity and location. An answer for a small university in New Delhi cannot be the same for a small university in, let us say, Koraput in Odisha.
Do we have enough expertise to run a new system?
Y.K. Alagh: If you want to introduce a system of this kind, then you want to do a lot of preparation. You can’t, simply because it is a COVID crisis and you cannot herd the students into an examination hall, say let us have an open book examination.
We need a road map, to move to this with academic autonomy.
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: On every front, we are asked to be atmanirbhar (self-reliant). Can we also be atmanirbhar at the university level? Let the university faculty take a decision on how to do this. If you start giving a little more responsibility to the university Vice-Chancellors, they will start coming out with solutions.
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To go back to what you said, about the differences between Delhi and Koraput, what differentiation can we have without creating iniquities?
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: Centralised control of a matter like education is not such a great idea. Because the whole purpose of education is actual learning and not examination. So if you want to change over to something with the purpose of improving the system, take measures which will address this year’s problem separately, and do something that will improve the overall system over a longer period.
Y.K. Alagh: You know, the heart of the game is to give autonomy to the educational system. Koraput is different from Delhi. But autonomy does not mean irresponsibility. The whole question of introducing accountability is something that is complex. At present what we think is that the teacher has to be accountable, the karamchari (employee) has to be accountable, but the Registrar or VC does not have to be, the State Education Department does not have to be, the MHRD [Ministry of Human Resources Development] doesn’t have to be. You know, budgets are not even sanctioned until the educational year is well under way.
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As I said, it is not something that you have bought something that is happening in the University of Pennsylvania, or in MIT or Harvard. It is a question of a different educational system. You can tell them, these funds are given with these conditions, if you don’t meet the conditions they will be discontinued. But you give them the freedom, particularly in things like an open book examination system.
In our context, where memory is a prime factor, with access to books, would the student have less focus?
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: Contrariwise, if you have an open book exam, the teacher knows that the student does not have to remember every little formula. [So] if I know that I have to give a closed book examination for two hours, I will set one kind of question paper. If I know that it is an open book examination for three hours or ten hours or an overnight exam, what in the U.S. is called a take-home exam, [it differs] all these models have been tried and tested many times over.
The most difficult exam that I have done in my life is a take-home exam. I could read any book I wanted, it was one of those typical unsolved problems. If it is a finite time exam that is proctored, supervised in a small hall, then I have to give them a question that they can answer in 10 or 15 minutes. So, the most difficult exams are the unstructured ones. Again, teaching is a local activity. It is between a student and her teacher.
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Y.K. Alagh: The innovations required are smaller classes, more interaction between teacher and student, to encourage them to think. You don’t say that you read the X theorem and go and repeat it in the exam if the question on that is there. So the boys and girls prepare roughly for two-thirds of the course, the rest they [let go] in choice.
Could you walk us through existing open book systems around the world?
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: The basic open book system is a very simple one. A teacher who is teaching a reasonably small class, even 100 students. Open book exams are never given for the basic courses. They are almost always for the advanced courses where it is the thinking ability of the student that is being evaluated and not memorisation or rote learning. It is not really in vogue for huge classes, like beginning undergraduate for chemistry is never an open book exam.
Usually, this happens for advanced courses where there are one or two well-defined textbooks. When they [students] come to the examination, it is not as if they have to learn for the first time in the exam. The open book system means familiarity. You should be familiar with the book, so you know, if you are given a question where you are supposed to remember the Heisenberg equations of motion, you can’t be searching through the book or going through the index. You should be able to almost automatically open it, and quickly verify and go through small parts of it.
Also read | DU teachers’ body asks UGC to cancel online open book exams
Have we had a prior discussion at a policy level on this?
Y.K. Alagh: No, I have not really heard of any systematic discussion in the UGC groups that I have been involved in, as well as in the university set-up or social science research set-up. The closest we came to it was in a committee in which Ram was also there, on plagiarism in the UGC. Plagiarism becomes easier if you are doing routine kinds of exams, but if you are going to do open book exams, plagiarism is not possible.
There is hardly any discussion on open book examination systems. You should have brought a few teachers together and brought out a road map, on how you move over to educational reform, particularly examination reform. Because we were not thinking of open book examinations, our educational reforms and examination reforms have been more along conventional lines.
Also read | Exams should be an inclusive process
What options do we have currently with the students facing trauma in concluding the academic year?
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: I have been teaching a particular course and some students have done their thesis with me this last semester. Whatever we come up with [this semester] will be a one-off, standalone solution. And left to myself, I would grade them on what they have performed so far, and give the student one opportunity in a take-home format or writing an essay which would be very individual, so you have the bulk of the grade based on prior performance plus a small percentage based on some kind of evaluation. Most important is to do it soon, and let them have their degrees this year itself.
Y.K. Alagh: As far as the student is concerned, a year of his life is an important issue. Other universities in the country or in the world are not going to wait for the fact that you have not been able to conduct an examination. They will want the academic transcripts. We should bite the bullet and try and find an answer. It is nobody’s stand to say that the coronavirus should be ignored. Lives are very important. Yet, within that, we have to try and manoeuvre our needs. Making students lose a year is a terrible cost. The answer is not to bring up from the air an open exam, but go through the difficult process of making them answer online papers, maybe in a supervised context.
Yoginder K. Alagh is a former Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University; Ramakrishna Ramaswamy is Visiting Professor at the Department of Chemistry, IIT - Delhi
