Preparing for CBSE open book examination

Finally, it is here!
CBSE has announced the open book examination from this year!

It is quite challenging to answer an open book examination if the questions are good enough to test the analytical abilities of the student.  First of all, mugging up of the content and just dumping on the examination answer sheet may not workout in this scenario.  One needs to have good conceptual understanding of the subject in order to answer the questions because of their indirect nature.  One must know where exactly the concept is discussed in the book and if only one book is allowed the student has to know which book explains the subject well. 

Getting conceptual understanding of the subject

It is essential to have the conceptual understanding of any subject we learn.  Always relate the concept with a good example or a real time application so that it could be explained in own words.  In a typical open book exam, the questions may not be confined to one chapter or topic in the text book. So it is very much important to relate the various topics explained in the subject.  For example, chemical processes that are responsible for changes in the human body, which is explained in biology.  From commerce group perspective, writing profit and loss account for an organization and creating balance sheet.  These are typical examples.  It varies from subject to subject, but the underlying principle is that one should have a fair understanding of the subject so that the time taken to solve the given problem or question is less.  Rest is to explain more by finding the topics from the text book.

Thinking process involved

I have to remind you that the in an open book examination, thinking process is involved as the question is indirect and it may be a puzzle kind of question with a demand to think from student side and then answer. So, you have to be sharp enough to understand the question and find the appropriate solution.