Open Book Examination and Higher Education During COVID-19: Case of University of Delhi

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic has shaken the higher education sector. Indian academic institutes are well acquainted with the traditional closed book examination; however, the pandemic has forced the institutes to resort to new methods to evaluate the students. Many academic units in India did not take the examination in the light of public health, but in the case of the University of Delhi, it decided to conduct an online open book examination (OBE). Therefore, in the present paper, we aim to evaluate the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of conducting online OBE by referring to the vast literature available. We further extended our study by assessing the students’ performance in an OBE and closed book examination. The results unveiled that students tend to score higher marks in the case of an OBE set up compared to closed book examination.