What are the Logistical and Administrative Challenges in implementing open book examination?
In fact, for decades many courses have had an open book final exam as well as a take-home final exam - this depends on the instructor of the particular course.
If switching from closed book to Open book examination , the logistical and administrative challenges, will be related to the academic ones! The academic ones relate to the type of knowledge assessed. In general the academic will no longer ask simple questions of recall but ask students to make use of knowledge in analysis and synthesis. This will mean the nature of the questions will change and so, the administrative support for students will need to take this into account. For example, past papers will be a poor revision tool for the students so the instructor should be asked to provide a mock exam (and potentially answers for the mock) to provide an appropriate guide to students as to what to expect in the exam. Similarly, the work of the invigilator of the exam will change, as they are less looking for students having written answers down and some how got them into the closed book exam, but rather the increased possibility of collusion,as students may pass notes under the cover of changing which book the are referring to. so invigilator training may need to change.
First of all, we can't simply convert all exams to open-book exams. It depends on how the course is relevant to data-driven, case-based, statistics, infographics, or calculative ones. It is better to go for an open book exam for such a course of study otherwise performance can't be expected as the scale of teaching delivered in the exam.
On the logistics and administrative challenges concern - it is very tough to manage by invigilators for being long hours exams, so manning issues will come, maybe more cheating chances will come in place, exchanges of notes, discussion will happen, you cant keep eyes on everyone etc.
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