Abstract
Traditional formal tests are usually given in a time-limited, closed book/notes style because instructors believe this approach measures students' learning. Nonetheless, other researchers argue that there are better alternatives and allowing students to use authorized cheat-sheets is one of them. The most important reason for allowing cheat-sheets is to help students to focus more on greater understanding and deeper learning. However, some researchers have questioned the efficacy of authorized cheat-sheets in formal exams. While it might be true, in some cases, that authorized cheat-sheets function like “crutches” in exams, we should not ignore that they are also learning tools. To make the cheat-sheets, students need to read the class material, process information actively, and select, organized, prioritize the content for the cheat-sheets. Our earlier research showed that in an undergraduate engineering course, the quality of students' cheat-sheet is strongly positively correlated with the students' performance on the exams. Moreover, the quality of the cheat-sheets improved through the sequence of exams during the semester and the students' grades did likewise. In this research, we collected more than 300 cheat-sheets from two sections of a graduate course on the same subject as our previous research. The class design of the graduate level course is similar to the undergraduate one but it covers more conceptually difficult topics at a greater depth including theory and proofs. We use the same cheat-sheet rating scheme and compare the quality of graduate students' cheat-sheets with the undergraduate students' on multiple dimensions including density, organization, number of sample answers, number of formulas and number of graph representations. We discovered significant differences between the graduate and undergraduate students' use of and how to best create authorized cheat-sheets and formulate useful directives.