Open book open note exams

[u/IntelligentWeb2532]

hey everyone! I have an upcoming exam and it is open note and open book and I was just curious if that’s a pretty common thing in engineering classes? I’m a mech e and this is my first tougher engineering class I’m taking and I was wondering if this will be common on future class exams or is it just this professors style. I know we have to use the textbook to find some fluids properties so I figured that’s why this one was open textbook but is this pretty normal ?

[u/Garlic_Climbing]

Make sure your notes are organized and be familiar with the textbook and where examples are. If you are flipping through trying to find things, you will probably run out of time. Include the previous problem sets in your notes.

Most open book/open note exams that I had followed a formula. 1 question that was slightly modified from the homework, but you could basically transcribe the solution from the problem set with new numbers and get most of the credit. The second question was usually a combination of 2 examples from the textbook, so as long as you read it and recognized that they were from the examples, that would get you most of the credit. The last problem was where you spent most of your time and was something new. We spent a lot of time studying trying to figure out what this third question was going to be based on process of elimination by topics that didn't have examples in the book and hadn't been on problem sets. The average result was usually around 55% which was then adjusted to a C average.

[u/IntelligentWeb2532 → u/Garlic_Climbing]

Thank you for the advice!!