Opinion | It’s time to say goodbye to closed-note final exams

For upperclassmen like me who have confined themselves strictly to the humanities and passed their natural science gen eds years ago, finals week is a week of papers, projects and portfolios. Gone are the days of cramming for a two-hour in-person exam and memorizing what I often felt was at least 40% useless information. I believe these days should be gone for everyone.

I would never venture to say that any sort of final examination could be fun or enjoyable, but I’ve found that since moving away from in-person tests and toward eight- to 10-page final papers, my finals week is far more tolerable. Where I once dreaded waiting to walk to a lecture hall I’d never been to before to take a test whose questions I could never fully anticipate, I now have a week free of classes to write at my leisure with a prompt that I typically receive at least a week in advance.

I recognize my bias here — surprise, surprise, the English writing student prefers to write — but I really do believe that, in addition to the more pleasant work culture of essays or portfolios, the format of a closed-note exam is somewhat obsolete.

Exams are great — or at least decent — at helping students memorize key principles, but that’s all they do. Most of the time, they demand slim to no critical thinking because they’ve already demanded so much memorization. Once, for an intro economics final exam, I had to memorize the name of the now-former CEO of the World Bank. I cannot help but think the two points I got for remembering a name I have now long forgotten could have been used for something more practical.

These exams that reward the regurgitation of principles and formulas and facts are not beneficial for post-college aspirations. The skills a student must build to excel at taking lengthy, memory-heavy exams simply do not translate well into a career setting. Yes, it’s great for your therapist to know on the spot which symptoms indicate which diagnoses, but nobody would stick with a shrink that treats each session like an hour-long psych test.

It’s time we recognize the era of rote memorization is moving out of style and usher in an era of more critical, even experiential, learning for final exams.

Papers, while not perfect, are a step in the right direction for testing a student’s knowledge. A paper does not demand memorization because the writer has access to any resource they need, but they still finish the paper having memorized the material anyway. 

I once wrote a midterm paper for an epistemology class on Hilary Putnam’s argument that we cannot possibly be brains in a vat — in a Matrix-esque scenario. I am generally not very interested in Putnam’s work, and had I only had to memorize the basics of his paper for an in-class exam, I would likely by now have forgotten I even read his work at all. However, because I instead had to spend hours rereading and actively deconstructing his complicated — and frankly, somewhat annoying — argument, I now still very clearly remember every bit of his paper.

Not only do I remember every bit of his paper, but I also got to practice the actual work of a philosopher and now have some baseline of experience if I ever wanted to try and write a thesis. Similarly, in my creative writing classes, the portfolios of work we submit at the end of the semester clearly demonstrate our ability to become professional writers. In most cases, the contents of these portfolios can function as work samples for a real job.

I’m sure many STEM students read that bit about how 30% of my grade was based on my ability to argue with a dead guy over the conceivability of the Matrix and lost any lingering respect for the humanities, but the point I want to make is that final exams should, in at least some small way, prepare students for their aspired area of study. There is no career that requires a full-grown adult to sit down at a table and take a test based only on what they are able to remember in a two-hour period.

Experiential learning has already weaseled its way into many curricula across subjects, and it’s time to let it take the reins. Even in lower-level gen ed classes, where it seems memorizing the basics is the easiest first step into the more focused upper-level classes, exams are not the way to go. How many students have let a passion slip through the cracks because their first exposure to it was long nights of rereading lecture slides before a midterm?

Exams have a place here and there — quick check-ins, quizzes to scare a class into actually doing the reading this week, open-note short answer tests — but the real key to learning will happen when students engage critically with the material and get a taste of their future career’s workload.

Finals should be a week of engagement and intrigue, but here we are stuck with flashcards and anxiety. The closed-note exam served us well in grade school, but it’s time to move on.

Thomas Riley wrote a final paper for that same epistemology class on the likelihood we are in a simulation. Send them your weirdest final project at tjr83@pitt.edu.