Electronic Exam Can Spot Hidden Differences
by
Brett Amdur

Electronic essay exams can make it easier for law teachers to recognize differences among students who completely miss issues, but who may understand the topic.

My project at Villanova began with a colleague's complaint that traditional law school exams don't allow teachers to make these distinctions. My colleague, Villanova law professor Frederick Rothman, pointed out that in a typical exam, all students who completely fail to address an issue get no "points" for that issue, even though it is possible, and perhaps even likely, that some students would get differing amounts of credit if they had spotted the issue and addressed it.

Professor Rothman came up with the concept of a "layered" exam. The idea was that for each fact pattern, the first question would be very broad, such as: "What are the rights of the parties?" Each question that followed would focus on a narrower issue, such as: "Did you address issue X in your answer to question 1? If not, address it now." Students who addressed issue X in question 1, of course, got more credit than students who addressed it only after prompting.

To administer this exam, we needed a system that: 1) precluded students from seeing a question until they had answered all of the questions that preceded it, and 2) precluded students from changing their answer to a question after they had seen a subsequent question. That's where the computer came in. I designed an exam, using the Toolbook authoring software, that met these requirements. Students typed responses into a box, and then clicked on a "Submit" button, which saved their answer to a file on our network. Students couldn't see a question until they had "submitted" all previous answers. While they could return to previous questions to see their answers, they couldn't modify answers that they already had submitted.

Two other features are worth noting. First, the course used a Folio Views electronic casebook. Throughout the semester, Professor Rothman encouraged students to take detailed notes in their shadow files, because they would be permitted to cut and paste from the shadow files, and from the book itself, into their exam answers. Second, the exam had a timer on it. The computer automatically saved the students' answers when time expired.

The exam worked just fine. Students seemed to overcome their initial fear of the computer (we had given them a practice computer exam earlier in the semester), and gave generally positive feedback. We intend to try it again this semester in two more classes.

If there's interest, I hope to create a program that will allow other teachers to easily build their own electronic exams similar to the one we've developed at Villanova.