Is knowledge content ignored in OBEs?
Thinking does not take place in a vacuum. Solving problems, inventing explanations, evaluating alternatives, testing theories and so on require close familiarity with and understanding of a large body of available facts, theories, analyses, and explanations. An open book examination can test the students’ mastery of content indirectly by testing how well the student is able to apply this knowledge to new information. In fact, such application-oriented questions are a superior means of testing the mastery of content. Even memorization is tested through such applications, provided that what is memorized has a crucial role in the processing of new information. We do expect chemistry students to know that carbon has a valency of four, and physics students to know the equation that expresses Newton’s law of gravitation. We do not treat such knowledge as meaningless memorization because without this knowledge further thinking in the subject will be impossible. What open book examinations wil
