A take-home exam to assess professional skills

Take-Home Exams in Higher Education: A Systematic Review

“…Freedman, 1968 [22] Personal reflections No Svoboda, 1971 [10] Personal comments based on experience No Marsh, 1980 [23] Hypothesis testing Yes Weber et al, 1983 [24] Hypothesis testing Yes Marsh, 1984 [25] Hypothesis testing Yes Grzelkowski, 1987 [26] Case study No Zoller and Ben-Chaim, 1989 [27] Survey + Case study Yes Murray, 1990 [28] Review No Fernald and Webster, 1991 [29] Case study No Haynie, 1991 [17] Hypothesis testing Yes Andrada and Linden, 1993 [8] Hypothesis testing Yes Ansell, 1996 [30] Collaborative THE (voluntary pairing) + final ICE No Norcini et al, 1996 [31] Hypothesis testing Yes Hall, 2001 [15] Pilot study with optional take-home test No Mallory, 2001 [2] Case study No Zoller, 2001 [12] Case study No Haynie, 2003 [32] Hypothesis testing Yes Bredon, 2003 [11] Multiple choice THE Yes Tsaparlis and Zoller, 2003 [33] Synthesizing from others Yes Giordano et al, 2005 [34] Hypothesis testing Yes Moore and Jensen, 2007 [35] Hypothesis testing Yes Williams and Wong, 2009 [1] Online survey, students reminded by e-mail No Frein, 2011 [36] Hypothesis testing Yes Giammarco, 2011 [6] Hypothesis testing Yes Lopez et al, 2011 [3] Case study No Rich, 2011 [4] Theoretical work No Marcus, 2012 [37] Review No Tao and Li, 2012 [38] Hypothesis testing Yes Hagström and Scheja, 2014 [39] Hypothesis testing Yes Rich et al, 2014 [40] Hypothesis testing Yes Sample et al, 2014 [41] Hypothesis testing Yes Johnson et al, 2015 [42] Case study Yes Downes, 2017 [43] Review No D'Souza and Siegfeldt, 2017 [44] Hypothesis testing Yes Lancaster and Clarke, 2017 [45] Review No…”

“…No research has been found that specifically addresses this issue, but it has been commented in some works. However, several researchers assert that THEs are more appropriate on the higher taxonomy levels and they also do not recommend them on the lower levels because answers can easily be retrieved from the Internet/textbook or copied from peers [3,4,8,17,24]. Hagström and Scheja [39] took it one step further and proved that introducing a meta-reflection on THEs stimulated a deep approach to learning (students were asked to describe and motivate their strategies and literature used).…”

“…This appears to be the most polarized question in the community, both concerning the study habits and the long-term retention. Some researchers assert that students who know that they will be assessed by a THE tend to study less than if they are assessed by an ICE [3,15,23,25,32,35]. Others take the polar, opposite standpoint and argue that they study more if they know they will have a THE [4,10,22,24,33,40].…”

“…ICEs are typically characterized by hard time limits (2-6 h) and the stress this imposes on the students. The main reason for advocating ICEs seems to be that it minimizes the risks of the exam being compromised by unethical student behavior [1,2], but it has been criticized for several reasons: it deludes students to superficial learning [1], it does not promote students' 'generic skills' [3], it imposes an unnatural pressure on the students that has an adverse impact on their performance [4], it is not consonant with the prevailing theory of 'constructive alignment' in higher education [1,5,6] and it is not suitable for assessing students' performance on the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy scale [7][8][9]. Bloom's taxonomy scale [9] is a hierarchical description of students' learning (revised by Anderson et al in 2001 [7]).…”

“…By HOCS, we refer to the ability to find, validate, select, integrate, synthesize, communicate, comprehend and present information, to function in teams, critical thinking, ethical responsibility, sustainability and social commitments and the ability to provide a holistic perspective [3,16]. 'Retention of knowledge' is defined as the knowledge that students retain (some) weeks after the initial testing [17].…”