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Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam - Universities find themselves in a surprising position: The only reliable way to evaluate what students have learned may be to bring back pen and paper.
Is this because the stakes are higher, do you think?
I sometimes purposefully did things a harder/older way for my PhD in French because my goal for the degree was purely to grow my critical thinking, not to get a job in academia (I happily work for a scholarly society now and do a lot of data work, actually!). But I recognize that most students do not go in with that mindset.
This is super interesting to me. Can I ask what kind of degree you’re doing? I started grad school in 2011 and I’m trying to imagine how blue books would have worked for us.
That makes sense. I never had exams in grad school as a history student — just reading responses each week and then 20-page papers at the end of the semester. That’s why I was wondering how blue books could work in a grad student context.
We could bring our own paper. Using a blue book would have driven me a little nuts. They're so wide-ruled. I always used the narrow-ruled paper when I had to write out answers/essays by hand.
"When students write, they write into uncertainty. They court risk. No surrogate exists for feeling an idea form in your mind and trying to express that idea on the page. And wonderfully, for the instructor, the blue book documents how students strain their way to an answer or an argument. The marks on the page are indelible, and efforts to amend them leave marks of their own: furious erasing or hasty strike-throughs. The blue book is a record of first thoughts, instincts, intuitions.
These fits and starts and failed experiments are a good thing—for the education of the individual and for the health of a society. The humanities are distinguished by the habits of mind that they inculcate, not for their success in forcing students to memorize facts. Among the most significant of these habits are a nimbleness of thought and a flexibility of argument, the ability to draw connections between diverse sets of facts. Those habits are honed by writing under pressure."
"When faculty moved away from in-person pen-and-paper exams, they assumed that cheating would be kept in check by honor codes, or by “locked” browsers, which would prevent students from accessing sites that would jog their memory or simply give them the answers. But these measures were never wholly effective. In a survey of undergraduates published in 2020, 62 percent admitted to cheating in some manner.
The advent of AI has only exacerbated the problem. In a matter of seconds, students can create an entire essay with the help of a chatbot. If they’re savvy, they can spend a bit more time to make it sound authentically human enough to evade detection by their professor. As my colleague Rose Horowitch has reported, such cheating has become so prevalent that Princeton recently gave up on its venerable honor code. For 133 years, students had signed a pledge not to cheat, and professors had trusted them to do the right thing. In May, in the face of rampant AI-enabled cheating, the university’s faculty voted to begin proctoring exams for the first time since the Gilded Age."
Me too, and I definitely couldn’t do it today. My hand cramps up so quickly now and I am too used to writing in a way that allows me to easily edit and add or move text. This is necessary and inevitable given the avalanche of AI, but I feel bad for young people who grew up with word processing software and have little to no practice with longhand exams.
It felt so satisfying to know that there was no doubt in anyone's mind that you and only you had sat your ass down and written what you had actually learned and thought about and studied for. Made me proud of myself! <3
lemontreetops | 5 hours ago
Current grad student. We’ve been doing blue books in all my grad courses lately. Can’t even trust grad students not to use AI.
1495381858 | 5 hours ago
especially can’t trust grad students to not use AI
Gildedfilth | 5 hours ago
Is this because the stakes are higher, do you think?
I sometimes purposefully did things a harder/older way for my PhD in French because my goal for the degree was purely to grow my critical thinking, not to get a job in academia (I happily work for a scholarly society now and do a lot of data work, actually!). But I recognize that most students do not go in with that mindset.
amauberge | 4 hours ago
This is super interesting to me. Can I ask what kind of degree you’re doing? I started grad school in 2011 and I’m trying to imagine how blue books would have worked for us.
arianrhodd | 4 hours ago
My quantitative stats exams were all pencil/paper. Though not blue book.
amauberge | 2 hours ago
That makes sense. I never had exams in grad school as a history student — just reading responses each week and then 20-page papers at the end of the semester. That’s why I was wondering how blue books could work in a grad student context.
arianrhodd | 2 hours ago
We could bring our own paper. Using a blue book would have driven me a little nuts. They're so wide-ruled. I always used the narrow-ruled paper when I had to write out answers/essays by hand.
qorbexl | 3 hours ago
I did all my thermo exams on long-ass legal paper
It's maintaining the thing, not inventing new
[OP] Gladyskravitz99 | 5 hours ago
"When students write, they write into uncertainty. They court risk. No surrogate exists for feeling an idea form in your mind and trying to express that idea on the page. And wonderfully, for the instructor, the blue book documents how students strain their way to an answer or an argument. The marks on the page are indelible, and efforts to amend them leave marks of their own: furious erasing or hasty strike-throughs. The blue book is a record of first thoughts, instincts, intuitions.
These fits and starts and failed experiments are a good thing—for the education of the individual and for the health of a society. The humanities are distinguished by the habits of mind that they inculcate, not for their success in forcing students to memorize facts. Among the most significant of these habits are a nimbleness of thought and a flexibility of argument, the ability to draw connections between diverse sets of facts. Those habits are honed by writing under pressure."
[OP] Gladyskravitz99 | 5 hours ago
"When faculty moved away from in-person pen-and-paper exams, they assumed that cheating would be kept in check by honor codes, or by “locked” browsers, which would prevent students from accessing sites that would jog their memory or simply give them the answers. But these measures were never wholly effective. In a survey of undergraduates published in 2020, 62 percent admitted to cheating in some manner.
The advent of AI has only exacerbated the problem. In a matter of seconds, students can create an entire essay with the help of a chatbot. If they’re savvy, they can spend a bit more time to make it sound authentically human enough to evade detection by their professor. As my colleague Rose Horowitch has reported, such cheating has become so prevalent that Princeton recently gave up on its venerable honor code. For 133 years, students had signed a pledge not to cheat, and professors had trusted them to do the right thing. In May, in the face of rampant AI-enabled cheating, the university’s faculty voted to begin proctoring exams for the first time since the Gilded Age."
oh-no-varies | 4 hours ago
I did an English literature degree in the early 2000s. We would go through 3+ blue books in 3 hour exams. The hand cramps!!!!
fetishiste | 4 hours ago
I did a law degree in the 2010s and all our exams were still handwritten then!
bicyclecat | 4 hours ago
Me too, and I definitely couldn’t do it today. My hand cramps up so quickly now and I am too used to writing in a way that allows me to easily edit and add or move text. This is necessary and inevitable given the avalanche of AI, but I feel bad for young people who grew up with word processing software and have little to no practice with longhand exams.
shakeyshake1 | 3 hours ago
Same here! My handwriting was barely even legible by the end.
naomi_homey89 | 5 hours ago
Well look at that
dingedarmor | 4 hours ago
We returned to blue books in our lit classes
ChocChipBananaMuffin | 5 hours ago
my university never stopped.
the_vole | 3 hours ago
I don’t see any problem with this.
touchtypetelephone | 3 hours ago
I don't see how this would work for my field, but I approve of it for fields it would suit.
TheLizardQueen3000 | an hour ago
I loved the blue-book exams in college.
It felt so satisfying to know that there was no doubt in anyone's mind that you and only you had sat your ass down and written what you had actually learned and thought about and studied for. Made me proud of myself! <3
abitofaLuna-tic | an hour ago
I've always wondered why they're called blue books - who decided they should be blue and why?