Beyond Review Session Paranoia: Partially Open Book Exams

Jeff spoke of end-of-course paranoia involving review session questions and the threat of needing a calculator.  As a corollary, I created many more questions than I cared to by having one exam be partly open book.  That makes it partly closed book.  The limitation is no commercial sources nor outlines entirely prepared by others (e.g., SBA or law review).  For some reason this year it sounded ambiguous and led to countless questions in class clarifying what was in and out.  Either those questions continued through one more email, or the endless class discussion on it drove one student’s tongue into his cheek; I got this email just now from him:  “Professor, Are we allowed to bring in commercially made/distributed plushies?  I ask this because I tend to bring in a stuffed entity for good luck, but since the only work I did in getting him was paying for him…”  Of course, I advised him to tattoo the bottom creatively with a Sharpie — both because it makes the work partly his own and allows its use, and because that is my mea culpa to the tattoo gemeinschaft.  On the other hand, instrumentalist and consequentialist tats as opposed to artistic ones may not appease and I may still be considered old.  [Alan Childress]