Give students the option to use books and notes in exams and thus encourage them to learn to apply knowledge rather than just attempt to memorize material. In other words, this assessment alternative provides a solid basis for students to master knowledge and skills and to demonstrate their mastery appropriately. It is arguable that standardized tests can encourage students to memorize material, and thus only have a temporary mastery and a limited understanding of targeted knowledge and skills. Another advantage of open-book exams is that they produce less significant anxiety than regular tests, allowing students like to perform more effectively and to produce work that is more reflective of their true ability.

Offering many of the same benefits as open-book exams, crib sheets in test scenarios essentially mean that students can bring notes into the exam. Students would decide what to include in their notes and teachers could encourage them to put key concepts into their own words as an additional learning experience. Take-home exams offer students a further level of autonomy because they involve instructors giving students problems to take home and solve outside of their classroom time. Generally, this allows that the problems themselves can be more demanding than classroom assignments would be and they may require students to use a variety of references to achieve success.

The potential disadvantage of this assessment type is that they can limit the scope of a student’s studying to the material related to the questions asked. There is also the potential problem that instructors cannot necessarily know if students received help in answering the questions. Some forms of plagiarism, for instance, may go undetected, and there is always the potential for students to have a parent or another third party assist with the work.