[nikitau]

Open book exams are not a new thing and I've often had them for STEM disciplines (maths and biology). Depending on the subject, you will often fail those unless you had a good prior understanding of the material.

If you can pass an exam just by googling something, it means you're just testing rote-memorization rather, and maybe a better design is needed where synthesis and critical thinking skills are evaluated more actively.

[HWR_14]

Open book, sure. But you don't even need a computer for that.

[vcf]

I make a point of only using references that are either available for free online or through our university’s library subscriptions. These are all electronic. My open book exam became an open computer exam when I realized students were printing hundreds of pages just for a 3-hour exam. This semester I’m switching to no-computer, bring your own printed cheat-sheet for the exam.

[freehorse]

And even if you are allowed to use a computer, you cannot use internet (and should not be hard to prevent that).

[wildzzz]

I had a Continuous and Discrete Systems class that allowed open everything during exams. You could google whatever you wanted but the exam was so lengthy that if you had to google something, you really did not have much time to do it and would definitely not have enough time to do it a second time. I would load up a PDF of the chapters and lectures I needed and my homeworks for that unit with everything properly labeled. It was much faster looking for a similar problem you already did in the homework than trying to find the answer online.

[croes]

Local LLMs

[DonHopkins]

Be sure to bring an extra power strip for all your plugs and adaptors.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tiny-corp-su...

[lostmsu]

My laptop runs gpt-oss 120B with none of that. Don't know how long though. I suspect a couple of hours continuous.

[HWR_14]

Which laptop?

[johannes1234321]

Except that the physical book isn't the way people lookup facts these days.

The open book test is purposes is to not have to know all facts (formulas) but proving how to find them and how to apply them. (Finding is part of it as the more you look, the less time you got to use it, thus there is an optimisation problem which things to remember and which to look up)

In modern times you wouldn't look those up in a book, thus other research techniques are required to deal with real life (which advanced certifications should prove)

[9rx]

Going to university isn't how people learn these days, so there is already a real-world disconnect, fundamentally. But that's okay as it isn't intended to be a reflection of the real world.

[mock-possum]

> Going to university isn't how people learn these days

That’s a surpsing statement that doesn’t ring true to me, what are you basing that off of / citing?

[9rx]

> what are you basing that off of

Observation? Children show clear signs of learning before they even make it through their first year out of the womb. Man, most people don't even consider university as an option until they are around 17-18 years of age, after they have already learned the vast majority of the things they will learn in life.

Data? Only 7-8% of the population have a university degree. Obviously you could learn in university without graduating, and unfortunately participation data is much harder to come by, but there is no evidence to suggest that the non-completion rate is anywhere high enough to think that even a majority of the population have step foot in a university even if for just one for day. If we go as far as to assume a 50% dropout rate, that is still no more than 16% of the population. Little more than rounding error.

Nothing? It's a random comment on the internet. It is not necessarily based on anything. Fundamentally, comments are only ever written for the enjoyment of writing. One trying to derive anything more from it has a misunderstanding of the world around them. I suppose you have a point that, for those who struggle to see the obvious, a university education would teach the critical thinking necessary to recognize the same. But, the fact that we are here echoes that university isn't how people learn these days.

> citing

Citing...? Like, as in quoting a passage? I can find no reason why I would want to repeat what someone else has written about. Whatever gives you enjoyment, but that seems like a pointless waste of time. It is already right there. You must be trying to say something else by this? I, unfortunately, am not in tune with your pet definition.