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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."
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 like running a marathon (or even 500m in my fat ass case) and feeling your legs become jslly. At that point, I am just slowly guiding my hand to form the words and quickly looking for a conclusion. Despute the physical strain, I miss putting pen to paper trying to ramble my way to a coherent answer. I rarely write now
"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."
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
In Finnish high school we have a system called Abitti. It's a separate Linux -based operating system launched on your computer from an usb stick. You can only access the programs on it and there is no internet.
It obviously doesn't help with homework but every assignment that is short enough to be done at school is now done using it.
Pen and paper is fine but it's hellishly slow to mark compared to electronic systems that can correct everything except essays automatically.
Wikipedia sez: “Butler University in Indianapolis was the first to introduce exam blue books, which first appeared in the late 1920s. They were given a blue color because Butler's school colors are blue and white; therefore they were named ‘blue books.’”
There’s a classic urban legend about blue books. A professor is administering an essay test in a Freshman English class. It’s a large class in one of those auditorium classrooms with a ton of kids. When the test time is up the professor instructs the students to stop writing and turn in their blue books. The students start filing down to the front of the class to hand in their blue books but one student keeps writing…and writing. The professor instructs him repeatedly to stop but he just keeps writing. After a few minutes of this, the student finally puts his pencil down and goes to the professor to hand in his blue book. The professor refuses to take it though, telling the student he’s getting an F on the exam for going over the allotted time.
The student exclaims, “Do you know who I am?”
The professor replies, “No, and I don’t care.”
So the student places his blue book on top of the pile and then grabs them all and throws them in the air, scattering them everywhere and then runs out of the classroom.
That method of cheating is way more fun than using AI, in my opinion.
I did exchange at a dutch university for social science, it was in 2022 and we did pen and paper exams in a big exam room even then. It surprised me because in my home university, it was still mostly hybrid/remote because of the pandemic. My high school IB exams were papers upon papers of written exams lol
Why can they, or why can’t they? And what do you hate about it? One reason test apps don’t solve the problem is that people own multiple devices. You still need a proctored exam room.
lemontreetops | a month 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 | a month ago
especially can’t trust grad students to not use AI
Gildedfilth | a month 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 | a month 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 | a month ago
My quantitative stats exams were all pencil/paper. Though not blue book.
amauberge | a month 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 | a month 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.
lemontreetops | a month ago
MPA. We can write essays of policy review without computers.
qorbexl | a month ago
I did all my thermo exams on long-ass legal paper
It's maintaining the thing, not inventing new
[OP] Gladyskravitz99 | a month 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."
oh-no-varies | a month 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 | a month ago
I did a law degree in the 2010s and all our exams were still handwritten then!
M0506 | a month ago
Same.
bicyclecat | a month 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 | a month ago
Same here! My handwriting was barely even legible by the end.
arkhamcityfc | a month ago
It felt like running a marathon (or even 500m in my fat ass case) and feeling your legs become jslly. At that point, I am just slowly guiding my hand to form the words and quickly looking for a conclusion. Despute the physical strain, I miss putting pen to paper trying to ramble my way to a coherent answer. I rarely write now
Alaizabel | a month ago
I completed my Poli Sci undergrad degree in 2019. Our profs were still giving us these bluebook-type exams.
[OP] Gladyskravitz99 | a month 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."
naomi_homey89 | a month ago
Well look at that
TheLizardQueen3000 | a month 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
the_vole | a month ago
I don’t see any problem with this.
dingedarmor | a month ago
We returned to blue books in our lit classes
ChocChipBananaMuffin | a month ago
my university never stopped.
spookyboi13 | a month ago
yeah fr lol not necessarily blue books but pretty much all of my exams have been pen n paper lol
DeeperEnd84 | a month ago
In Finnish high school we have a system called Abitti. It's a separate Linux -based operating system launched on your computer from an usb stick. You can only access the programs on it and there is no internet.
It obviously doesn't help with homework but every assignment that is short enough to be done at school is now done using it.
Pen and paper is fine but it's hellishly slow to mark compared to electronic systems that can correct everything except essays automatically.
abitofaLuna-tic | a month ago
I've always wondered why they're called blue books - who decided they should be blue and why?
M0506 | a month ago
Wikipedia sez: “Butler University in Indianapolis was the first to introduce exam blue books, which first appeared in the late 1920s. They were given a blue color because Butler's school colors are blue and white; therefore they were named ‘blue books.’”
HaggisPope | a month ago
Common misinterpretation, they’re actually named after Hugo Blue who invented the book
GingerBelvoir | a month ago
There’s a classic urban legend about blue books. A professor is administering an essay test in a Freshman English class. It’s a large class in one of those auditorium classrooms with a ton of kids. When the test time is up the professor instructs the students to stop writing and turn in their blue books. The students start filing down to the front of the class to hand in their blue books but one student keeps writing…and writing. The professor instructs him repeatedly to stop but he just keeps writing. After a few minutes of this, the student finally puts his pencil down and goes to the professor to hand in his blue book. The professor refuses to take it though, telling the student he’s getting an F on the exam for going over the allotted time.
The student exclaims, “Do you know who I am?”
The professor replies, “No, and I don’t care.”
So the student places his blue book on top of the pile and then grabs them all and throws them in the air, scattering them everywhere and then runs out of the classroom.
That method of cheating is way more fun than using AI, in my opinion.
Additional_Ease2408 | a month ago
Honestly I never understood why they stopped using paper exams. Technology is so unreliable.
CarpeDiemMaybe | a month ago
I did exchange at a dutch university for social science, it was in 2022 and we did pen and paper exams in a big exam room even then. It surprised me because in my home university, it was still mostly hybrid/remote because of the pandemic. My high school IB exams were papers upon papers of written exams lol
Librarian-Voter | a month ago
I hate this. Why can BlueBook make a docked down app??
Bright_Ices | a month ago
Why can they, or why can’t they? And what do you hate about it? One reason test apps don’t solve the problem is that people own multiple devices. You still need a proctored exam room.
touchtypetelephone | a month ago
I don't see how this would work for my field, but I approve of it for fields it would suit.