Lockdown and online learning sent the world of university exams into an infinite and unsolvable crisis. Whether take home or in person, handwritten or typed, open- or closed-book exams are the best for students remains a topic of intense debate. Personally, I am probably inevitably always going to be saddened by whichever format my department chooses. I don’t wish to suggest that one exam format is better than the others. Afterall, we all work very differently. My real problem is departments changing the formats of exams annually.

Both the English and HSPS departments announced earlier this academic year that they would be changing the format of their exams for multiple cohorts studying the undergraduate tripos. Last summer, the part IB English exams suffered severe technical disruptions from the Inspera software, which resulted in many students losing their work mid-exam. Inspera undeniably is the enemy of many Cambridge students. I never anticipated, walking into my first exam as a fresher, clutching my laptop in nervous anticipation, that I too would be cut out of my exam and lose a good amount of writing time, something which happened to a few of us. However, when part IB History exams were announced to be typed again this year, with the use of Inspera, it made sense to me. I am tested and familiar with how to revise and manage my time for this format of exams, whether I like them or not.

“A Cambridge degree has just been made harder once again”

As Cambridge students, we are not afforded the most copious amount of time to revise. Many of us spend Easter Term, and the vacation period before, juggling projects, coursework, and continuing contact hours. And each exam format does require a distinct style of revising. I am well adapted to revising for a closed book and typed exam; I can type at a good speed and know I must spend a fair amount of time memorising things as I cannot rely on anything in the exam. However, the HSPS department gave its students multiple online, open-book exams to complete in their rooms last year. This year, second year students were informed their exams would now be in person and online. This could well require many of them to have to drastically reorient their methods of studying and revising, methods they developed and tested last year with encouragement from the faculty.

The problem is not with in person or handwritten exams, but rather that departments should think carefully about implementing consistency from first-year exams onward rather than dumping new formats on students in their second or final years, when things actually count. Revising for an open-book and closed-book exam are two completely different processes and require a different assessment of how to use time, which is very limited. Unsurprisingly, a Cambridge degree has just been made harder once again.

“Hours of revision could ultimately end up devalued and discarded”

Many of us have spent hours perfecting our skills for the exam formats we are used to, whether that’s timed handwritten essays to ensure faster writing or curating efficient notes to use in an open book. Discarding these things can be frustrating, especially when comparatively little notice is given. Painstaking hours of revision could ultimately end up devalued and discarded, making marks more precarious once again.

Concerns about technological problems and overuse of AI are a valid problem, one departments have clearly not managed to pre-empt or notice over the last few years of online and typed formats. Hopefully, changing exam formats mid tripos will not send too many of us scrambling back towards square one. But, inevitably, the sentiment has definitely been expressed by many.

While change is a natural thing, some of these decisions seem fundamentally unfair. The University should take the students and the demands made of them into account more often when making such decisions.

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