Highlighting and underlining work in an open book test is ok if you only want to parrot back information when asked, but to really know something you have to get into it and read or get your hands on it. In some classes taking notes by hand and copying down things seen or told helps, but until a student is able to put concepts together and fully understand what is being taught, they will never gain enough knowledge to test well. It seems that many of our students today only want enough information to pass the exam, not enough to adequately do the work that is involved in the field of study they are in. They may well know enough to look good on paper, but pick up a tool and try to show they know something is another matter entirely. Doing other means of surprise testing in my opinion doesn’t really put the information there, it shows how much they don’t know and they find a way to put it in memory. Seeing things over and again helps learning, I totally agree with that idea, but until students are shown how much they don’t know out of what they are expected to know, they will be lazy enough to just get by much of the time.
