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17 Open-Book and Take-Home Exam Strategies In order to get the most points for an open-book or takehome exam, you must understand why they're given. They are not intended to test how much you know about the subject but how well you can find, use, organize, and interpret data. STRATEGY 1: BECOME FAMILIAR WITH THE TEXTBOOK If you're preparing for an open-book test, learn how to find your way around in the book. Study the table of contents. Get a feel for the index by looking up a number of topics picked at random. Read the chapter or chapters on which you will be tested so that you know what's in them and what point of view the authors take on the subject. Learn how to find and use the appendices, tables, charts, and other aids the book contains. 97 98 TEST-TAKING STRATEGIES STRATEGY 2: DON'T COPY YOUR ESSAYS OUT OF THE BOOK A take-home essay exam is little more than an ordinary essay assignment, except that it may be worth more points. Try to find out the maximum expected length and shoot for that. Zealous students always write long take-home exams, and you don't want to be penalized for saying the same thing in fewer words. With most instructors, a long paper picks up some extra credit just for being long. On both open-book and take-home essay exams, never copy more than a sentence or two verbatim from the textbook or other assigned reading. And whenever you do copy, put it in quotes and identify the source. Remember, the point of the exam is not to test how well you copy but how well you digest, explain, analyze, integrate, or add to the assigned information-in your own words. If you can add interpretations or opinions of your own, so much the better, but label them opinions if that's what they are. Work as many different sources and references as possible into your take-home essay, and mark them clearly because they're generally worth lots of extra points. STRATEGY 3: PREPARE FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING EXAMS Take-home and open-book exams that involve problem solving require advance preparation if you're going to do your best You can get information from the open book, but you can't learn puzzling concepts for the first time. Make sure, before the exam, that you understand all the important principles, formulas, definitions, and so forth. Also do some open-book pretests as you prepare for the exam. ...

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