I consider take home exam is a way of obtaining knowledge; it is a better way rather than recall or memorization exams.

There are many benefits of take-home exam, but they are disadvantages as well, especially the risk of inviting improper collaboration or help from others.

Well, It depends on the questions , we have different kinds of questions :

1) challenging and needing creativity and research

2) questions which their only solution is knowing some formulas and applying them

in case (1) if the questions are perfectly prepared for that purpose ,it really helps the students with their research experience (as they have to read many books and BUILD their own solutions with creativity ) and improves their logical systems and of course their IQ; even MIT and NASA use such methods in some situations to evaluate the students and candidates 

I myself think the conventional method of thinking (memorizing some formulas ) and answering some bunch of easy questions by applying those formulas should be finished and the new method should come

Regards,

S,R

I like take home examination more than those under invigilation. Of course, the examiner has to set such a question paper that the students can not get assistance from any source including the net. His only advantage is that he has access to all material that he can consult as reference. I have been giving such examinations to my Aarhus University, Denmark  master's students for the last five years. They do it on computer; the answer books are sent to me on wise flow. From  there, I can down load, evaluate and send the scores. It even tells the percentage of plagiarism in an answer. 

I consider take home exam is a way of obtaining knowledge; it is a better way rather than recall or memorization exams.

There are many benefits of take-home exam, but they are disadvantages as well, especially the risk of inviting improper collaboration or help from others.

Take home exam, is a kind of project exam. I will ask however, to present the project to the class where a score is assigned. 

We should be aware of cheating! You are right dear @Costas, it is the step toward the honest path on the way to successful exam's pass! 

We should learn some lessons from Harvard's experience!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal

http://blogs.ams.org/phdplus/2013/02/03/the-take-home-lesson-from-the-harvard-cheating-scandal/#sthash.Wfim3CxM.dpbs

Take home exams are best fitted for graduate students where questions are thought provoking and more time requiring research work is needed to come up with their own possible good answers. But for undergraduate students, as most of you indicated, it is a good procedure to let students present their solutions in class (although at times impossible to do as there are more students) to keep honesty and avoid submission of a solution from some one help. 

Take-home exams should be analyzed in terms of why were they given in the first place. This mode of examination must be policy-based, and not personal. I see their good aspects when carefully planned such that they are designed for a particular type of outcome, to specific discipline, to appropriate students.

Take home examinations may be fit for examinations where the answers cannot be taken from books, the net or notes of the students but from outside the four-walls of the classroom, the student's family, neighborhood, or community.

I fully agree with Dejenie.

Just to add: my in-class exams are open notes but in a condensed form. Students can prepare ONE single hand-written (not copied) sheet of paper (= 2 pages) with a summary of their notes or anything else they want to use for the exam. In this way, they have to structure the material and make decisions on what is important and what can be left out.

Take home exams should require research and a good amount of effort on the part of the student. The exam should count for 20% to 30% of the course grade. The exam should target higher level analysis thinking skills.

Learning is continuous and it happens at home too... TAKE HOME exams are good for an informal setup and ambiance, however to have the process ensured for evaluation, certain intervention of precautionary steps or constraints should be applied, such as

My end-term examination in Aarhus University carries 60% weight; the rest 40% is course work. Still, many students get a low or very low score. The problems and questions that we  have to pose in such examinations has to be very carefully designed. The students have only three hours for doing the answers; as the portal will allow them access only between specified time limits.

When the students have well known that cheating will destroy them, and they well follow the ethics, then open exams are very valuable. If it is followed by an oral session for presentation, discussion, and assessment, I think that a take-home exam is more beneficial than recalling and memorizing equations and theory in a closed exam. And it is better to be project based. It is an effective way as it helps thinking and innovation, and its benefits will be more. With the normal closed exams, most of the students, the time they leave the classroom, they forget all or most of what they have studied. But the open exam will result in a longer lasting knowledge.

It is mostly suitable for postgraduate students, but if number of the students in undergraduate classes is small, then conducting such exams will be possible. I think the learning outcomes will be better and the students will be more confident.

Academic degrees are sometimes considered high value. The incentive and opportunity exist for extensive cheating and fraud with any work outside of the classroom (including online and distance-learning courses).  There is no substitute for a student to speak for herself/himself in front of a classroom to demonstrate learning and knowledge.  Similarly for testing purposes, there is no substitute for completeing an exam in class with a definite time limit.  Any other methods of assessment and evaluation introduce an element of potential fraud and cheating. The more difficult the course and the more valuable (e.g., Organic Chemistry for premedical preparation), the more probable a student might cheat.

Dear friends - thanks for your interesting comments on my query about 'take home' exams. A valid point was made by many friends that there is no guarantee that students receiving 'take-home' exam would do it in an ethical way without consulting fellow students or seniors. Some students of "adventurous" type may even type out such exam questions casually in Research-Gate and some of us may be even unknowingly helping such students! With best wishes, Sundar

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

In the past, when I taught pure distance education (online), I had to often use take-away exams. If a teacher or professor is concerned with this type of exam, you can assign a lower grading weight to it, and then assign a greater weight to your closed book exams, and other assignments or projects. The other strategy is to use a combination of question types, for example open-ended and application ones, so that each student's answer may (or should be) different in the end. As I understand and have practiced it, the idea behind take-away exams is not just to assess or test the students but they also learn and summarize their knowledge while they are completing the exam. They can get help, of course, but take-away exams are sometimes more similar to real-life and job tasks. In a normal job, not many people would actually write reports closed book, without talking to anyone, or under a strict time limit. After the take-home exam, you can also let the students do a brief presentation or speak with them individually briefly, to cross-check. This type of assessment has its limitations or risks so that is why we would use a combination of different assessments for each class. 

Emre 

Dr. E 

World has changed a lot and hence teachers need to also foot into the use of technology. Formal ways of testing the learning with pages of answers sheets (still in vogue) needs to find alternative Computer based MCQ's or other practice tests.

Take Home test is well suited only when the following is ensured before the testing process.

Research have shown it that a good student is not known only by memorization. So in my own view I think examinations  should be conducted in a blended mode(take home and class assignment or exams). Memorization does not really matters alot but what is important is understanding which can not  be easily determine if exams are not conducted in blended mode.

Dear Ojo: The problem with take-home exam is this - it is not fully assured whether the students would follow ethical practice in answering such exams. They are not supposed to consult other students in the class or seniors or other people. But one may easily post a query in ResearchGate or FaceBook or other forums and get answers in no time. Traditional exams have their merits always..

Best wishes, Sundar

@ Vaidyanathan, that is okay, but learning should not be in isolation. lot of students may pass examination but yet did not gain anything, call such student later he/she will not be able to produce full prove that he /she understood the examined subject indepthly. Also not all examinations should be take home that is why I said examination should be in blended mode. The purpose of examination depends on what you  as tutor want to test in your students, it could be a student smartness in that course or what he/she understood of the subject matter, it can also be to test the ability of a student to carry out research or to do extra reading independently i.e to go beyond what he or she was taught in the class because not everything can be taught in class, research has also show it that most students can only grab about 75% in class. So there is need for take home examines or assignment because it will force the student to go extra miles. Well it can never be over emphasize that student can consult mediums in getting examination questions solved. In the case of the traditional exams, what about students who defiles the rules of examination one way or the other buy yet unseen or noticed by the invigilators.

Thanks

Quality of work: students feel that they are better able to demonstrate their understanding and their ability to express complex ideas, and staff who have marked this work agree that it can be assessed using higher attainment criteria.

Presentation: work is presented to a more professional standard and is produced in a way that reflects normal working practice (i.e. word processed rather than hand written).

Disabilities:

The University does not need to provide different facilities for students with (most) exam related disabilities, as students can complete the take home exam in a venue and time of their own choice. Compared with standard public examinations, the take

home exam is therefore relatively disability neutral.

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/teaching-and-learning/documents/ExamsNov13.pdf

You are giving a real-life complex problem. The textbooks will not provide any answer. Hence, copying is prevented. The students have to critically think and solve the problem as a proof of learning the required basic materials. This approach will identify the best solution and the capacity of the students abilities to analyse the given problem and develop a solution. They are expected to review their solution and improve.