The examination has been predominantly closed-book. However, due to COVID, an alternative method is open-book examinations. We tested the hypothesis that students taking open-book, open-web exams spend less time studying compared to closed-book, closed-web exams. Moreover, we tested the exam performance using questions of different types according to Bloom's taxonomy. Students were assigned either open-book or closed-book groups at the beginning of the semester. Study participants kept a study journal entering the minutes they spent daily in studying the subject and completed a post-semester survey. Study time and exam performance of each period were compared between two groups. We found that students' exam performance over different types of questions were descending as the level of difficulty became more challenging. These results suggest that students in the open-book group deal with challenging questions poorly.
