teaching - Is it unreasonable to change the rules of a quiz/exam one week in advance?

I am the course leader for an undergraduate course. We have two quizzes each semester: one around the middle of the semester, and one at the end.

For the first quiz, students were allowed to bring a one-page "cheat sheet" which could be either handwritten or printed.

Our original intention for the "cheat sheet" was to encourage students to process the course material and to summarize it for their own learning. Unfortunately, I noticed that some of the students had instead merely printed the lecture slides in really small font. Instead of actively working through the material, trying to understand it, select what was important, and write it down, these students took the easy way out by copy-and-pasting everything onto their "cheat sheet".

As I began planning for the second quiz, I decided that students would gain more from the process of preparing their "cheat sheets" if they were forced to handwrite their "cheat sheet". There seems to be some research that backs this up, for example, this article says:

In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how note-taking by hand or by computer affects learning.

"When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can," Mueller tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can't write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them."

Today, 10 days before the date of the quiz, I made an announcement in class that for the second quiz, only handwritten "cheat sheets" are allowed. One of the students was extremely upset about this policy change. He felt that:

1. Making such a change 10 days before the quiz/exam is unfair and unprofessional


2. He had already spent hours preparing his digital "cheat sheet", so changing the policy penalizes students like him who prepared for their quizzes early.

The student was so annoyed that he sent an e-mail to the department general office to complain about this policy change. I was quite surprised that the student feels so upset, and I feel that the student is making a mountain out of a molehill. However, this is my perspective as a course leader, so I wanted to ask for an impartial and unbiased opinion.

Questions:

1. Am I being unreasonable/unprofessional by changing the requirements for the quiz "cheat sheet" 10 days in advance?


2. Is the student overreacting?


3. Or are both of us in the wrong?

Response to comments

To be brutally honest, if an "open book" exam is made substantively easier by having reference to all the course/lecture material simply presented verbatim, then it's not a very good open book exam...

On the other hand, if the challenge posed by your exam wasn't really affected just because students brought in all the lecture materials, then what's the issue?

You raise a very good point that I hadn't considered earlier. Personally, I don't think that bringing in all the lecture materials would help a student significantly, because our quizzes do test understanding and analysis rather than rote memorization.

The reason why I would still nevertheless prefer to require a handwritten cheat sheet is because I feel that a significant proportion of students are lazy, and without being prodded (by having to handwrite a "cheat sheet"), they would just copy the lecture slides wholesale and hope for the best.

If the exam was in the middle of the semester, why didn't you bring up the change earlier?

This is a fair question.

The reason why I didn't think about this earlier is because I was busy with research, and I only work on what I need to do for the course in the next 1-2 weeks. This incident has shown me that there are teaching-related problems that I could avoid in the future if I were to plan ahead work with a longer time horizon. However, because I am an assistant professor who is not yet tenured, to be brutally honest, teaching is not my highest priority.

Although it would be ideal to announce the "cheat sheet" policy 6 weeks in advance, I feel that announcing the policy 10 days in advance gives the students enough time to prepare. I do feel that if I only gave the students 1-2 days of notice, that would be unfair because I am giving them very short notice.

What I decided to do in the end

I posted what I decided to do in the end, and what I learned from the community, in my answer below.

Editor's note: additional information provided in a comment:

There are about 600 students in the course. It just so happens that I am the "academic advisor" to 6 students, 4 of whom are taking the course. We have a WhatsApp group, where we can communicate casually about school-related stuff. (WhatsApp is an instant messaging app.) I've found that the fastest way to get feedback from students is not using e-mail but using WhatsApp. So I'm taking Solar Mike's advice to ask a select few students how they feel about this handwritten-only policy, to get an idea of what the broader student population thinks.

Answer

As requested by the asker, I am making this an answer. I have collated and summarised my points in the comments and added an opinion that I feel more constructively answers the question posed.

First of all, I feel that if an "open book" exam is made substantively easier by having reference to all the course/lecture material simply presented verbatim, then it's not a very good open book exam. The point of allowing references into an open book exam is to de-emphasise the role of rote memorisation. But the counter-balance should be to emphasise the role of deep analysis and application. If the exam is made too easy because the students have access to the full set of lecture slides, one probably hasn't set an exam that's analytical enough.

If an exam is really testing "understanding and analysis" then its marking scheme will be penalising regurgitators. In fact, they'll be doubly penalised because if they've just copy-pasted the lecture materials without adequately digesting them, they'll be wasting time reading them all over again during the exam instead of thinking up a good answer. So, with a robustly set and marked exam, one shouldn't have concerns about students with "wholesale" cheat sheets getting away with anything.

I am not arguing that references should have no value at all (then what would be their point?). I'm merely advising that an open book exam has to be set differently (and often much more thoughtfully) than a closed book exam.

With that preamble out of the way, let's address the actual question posed. I agree with those who've said that springing this change in expectations this close to the exam is likely to be unfairly penalising those students who've started work earlier on their reference materials. This group of students would likely be the more industrious, conscientious and organised group. Even though only one student vocally protested, it is likely there are others who are adversely affected whom the asker is not aware of.

The asker wants the students to put more thought and work into digesting their material before preparing their reference sheets. Ironically, by demanding a format change (handwritten sheet) so close to the exam, the penalty is likely to be unduly placed on the shoulders of exactly those who've fulfilled the spirit of the examiner's expectation, by starting work early and painstakingly digesting and summarising the material. I think it's unlikely that the "lazy" students who've just copy-pasted the material wholesale would be too perturbed since they haven't really invested very much time and effort into the process. Neither would the "last-minute chaps" who wouldn't have been caught out by the late announcement. This sudden change in expectation is likely to affect those whose study behaviour the examiner is more likely to think of as exemplary, and that's the sad part.

How to address the situation? Apart from reviewing the format/difficulty of the exam (to make wholesale cheat sheets not only useless, but a time-wasting disadvantage, as I mentioned), one way would be to review what exactly the complainant has incorporated in his cheat sheet. If the student has just copy-pasted wholesale, then you can feel less bad about the whole thing as he's likely to "just a whinger". On the other hand, if he's actually taken pains and effort to collate, reorganise and summarise your material into his cheat sheet, then you seriously have to reconsider your demands as you could be affecting more than this one student.

On balance, I would say that you should let this requirement slide this time. If your expectations are going to be highly prescriptive, you should make them clear much earlier next time (then no one really has a serious basis for complaint).

There are still things you can do. You can ask for the (identified) cheat sheets to be handed in with the exam; this allows you to gauge exactly which route students are taking with preparing their cheat sheets (printed vs handwritten, wholesale vs summarised). Make it clear that this time the students won't be judged by their cheat sheets, it's merely for your own analysis to set future policy. To keep yourself honest, mark their exams first, finalise those marks and then do the cheat sheet review. That way, you'll have an unbiased opinion and any correlation you draw between how a particular student has done vs the quality of their cheat sheet will be more meaningful.

For future exams, announce your expectations early (months in advance would be best). You can even go so far as to require students to submit their finalised individual cheat sheets a week or so before the exam. This will ensure they've all worked early enough and also permit you to check that they've met your demands with regard to format and content. Inform that they will be allowed no other materials during the exam but for their pre-made cheat sheets, which will be distributed by the proctor prior to the start of the exam.

There are complications with my suggestion in the last paragraph - what if a subset of students have prepared sub-par cheat sheets? Should you let that count against them in the final grading? Should you let them revise their cheat sheets and do a final review (and is there enough time all around for this)? Remember that my suggestion is meant to accommodate your seeming desire to be highly prescriptive about what to allow in your cheat sheets, so this is one way to control their quality. It's up to you to navigate any potential complications.

But personally, I would just say allow any non-electronic reference into the examination, and make sure it's set in such a way that it still remains meaningful as a test of understanding.