Aspen High School’s IB Psychology program is one of 30 schools chosen to participate in an open book exam pilot program The study allows students to have a teacher create a ‘cheat sheet’ for their IB exams. Sarah Ward, AHS IB Psych teacher tells us a little more about what exactly this entails.

“ The paper one is part of the program, and we will be participating in an open book exam meaning that students will be able to go into the exam with essentially a note sheet,” Ward said.

Students who didn’t get to participate in the study are wondering if their work will be graded the same as the students who are allowed to have the note sheet.

Ward said, “So the curriculum is exactly the same. But all of these schools are essentially going to provide data to the IB to determine whether or not everyone will be able to do this in the future. The students who are participating in the study had to sign releases to participate and they’re going to be getting surveys regularly.”

Eileen Knapp, the IB coordinator for AHS, explained more about how the IB study is going to go.

“There’s the pilot group and then there’s the control group. Not every student can bring their own unique piece of notes to the exam, but the students will prepare using that note sheet. The way IB is going to grade is grading them according to the same standards we need to reach the same objectives and show the same understanding analysis” according to Knapp.

AHS has many IB courses, so naturally the student body may wonder if this will extend to other IB courses, Knapp explained.

“So by 2030, the IB diploma program as a whole is going to look very different with more flexibility and in this case, more open book exams, or that’s how they define open book exams and what they’re doing from right now.”

Knapp also talks about how they want to eliminate the memorization part of learning as much as possible.

“Maybe the language that they’re using is more accurate because they have that outlined in this specific study. Written clearly without memorization, and that’s truly what the IB is trying to do.” Knapp said.

In all, this new program could allow IB students to perform better on their exams and require less memorization with more core learning.