Mathematics Take Away Open Book Assessment

With the current Covid-19 crisis many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are moving to take away exams which by their nature are open book exams. Many mathematicians do not have experience of take home open book assessments and this post is intended to help deal with this. This has been put together quickly and is intended to be practical rather than theoretical. I hope you find it of use. I will update when I can so if you have any suitable links or ideas, then please leave a comment. Principles Throughout the next few months, students and staff will be sick, caring for the sick, living in isolation, perhaps mourning loved ones, and generally suffering from the stress and strain. Keep this in mind. Mathematics lecturers and students are generally not familiar with take home or open book assessment and will need more instruction/guidance than usual. Furthermore, if they had known they were to be assessed in this way, then they would have approached their learning differently. Assessment is likely to be online. Students sending scripts through the post is generally infeasible as HEI campuses are likely to be closed. Plagiarism, collusion, and impersonation are difficult problems that will require thought (and likely some compromise). Keep it simple. Practicalities Online assessment is not straightforward. Some HEIs have suggested assignments should be submitted in, say, Word. However, it is not unreasonable for students to submit handwritten work. See How to have students submit handwritten work in an online setting by Robert Talbert. Gradescope are (at time of writing) offering free access to new courses. Gradescope is worth investigating if you have not yet seen it. It was invented by some tutors tired of marking mathematics. It can help with assessment of handwritten mathematics! Involve external examiners. They will be dealing with the same problems and often have useful advice and experience. Make it clear to students what assessment will be used and what a good answer looks like. In an ideal world, students should be given a model paper and a mock paper to try. The model paper shows them what a good answer looks like. The mock paper should be administered like the real one. This gives students a chance to experience the log in, upload and so on so that they are familiar with the system. Length of time for take away: Students may be in different time zones, not have access to equipment, work in noisy, shared spaces (siblings may not be at school), have special needs, and so on. Hence, a short timescale for uploading answers is problematic. A time of at least 24 hrs can mitigate many such problems. Shorter exams can help reduce the opportunity for plagiarism. Longer exams means asking for answers in Latex more reasonable. Such answers can be checked by plagiarism detectors such as TurnitIn. Traditionally, student work which appeared not to be the work of the student could be checked by giving the student a viva. In the current situation this will be difficult and limited by resources. It may not be possible to interview all students on all modules. Also, conducting a viva by video conference is significantly harder than in person as mathematics may need to be written down and held up to the camera. Furthermore, the resulting picture may be low resolution due to bandwidth issues. Consider whether you are assessing for pass/fail or giving a mark. Obviously a mark unseen by students can be useful to determine pass/fail. It is important to keep the marks in case of appeal. Check with accreditation bodies what their policies are during this crisis. In particular, their advice may conflict with long time frames for assessments. Many students have special needs to consider and may need more time to complete assignments. Hence, a system releasing an exam and expecting all students to complete at the same is likely best avoided. Times...