Exploring the evaluative efficacy of Open - Book Open Web (OBOW) examinations : Insights from Indian Undergraduate Degree Programs

Abstract

The higher educational paradigm in India has often been censured in academic and industrial circles alike, for its archaic academic practices, typified by an overemphasis on memory-based learning and examination structures. Consequently, a plethora of educated-yet-unemployable commerce and management graduates find it difficult to pursue productive
and meaningful jobs (Mishra et al., 2014). The current study emphasizes on the 'examination system' as a fundamental facet of educational delivery, and aims to assess the efficacy of Open-Book-Open-Web (OBOW) as an alternative and more consequential mode of conducting examinations in the context of undergraduate commerce degree programs in India. The
study attempts to answer the more pertinent question of whether such an unorthodox approach of conducting examinations would enable undergraduate-students to better cope with real-life challenges and situations. To fulfill these objectives, a descriptive, as well as an experimental research design, was employed. Phase-I of the study witnessed several undergraduate commerce as well as management students, professors, and working professionals in India participating in an extensive survey, which sought to probe into their perceptions and attitudes towards the conduct of the OBOW examinations, as opposed to the closed book (CB) counterpart. The second phase (Phase-II) witnessed an examination conducted with two test groups—Test Group 1 (experimental group, appearing for OBOW examinations) and Test Group 2 (control group, appearing for CB examinations). Phase-I results indicated that respondents, in general, possessed a favorable attitude towards OBOW examinations, although they expressed skepticism about the feasibility of replacing archetypal CB exams with their OBOW variant. In the phase-II experiment, significant differences were observed among the students participating in the OBOW examination and those who took the Closed book examination. Test Group 1 (experimental group) performed much better than the control group and seemed to have relatively lesser difficulty