VietNamNet Bridge – It is now exam season for university students, and the scene of students holding very thick textbooks and documents to learn is being seen at all university dormitories. However, students of many universities do not have to do that.

Students of the HCM City Academy for Journalist and Propaganda in the studio

The examination room was like a small editorial board and students had two hours to identify ideas, implement the ideas and design a newspaper themselves.

While the students were surprised at first because of the ‘open’ exam questions, it took only a few minutes to overcome their surprise before they began fulfilling their tasks.

Ngoc Huyen, a lecturer and creater of the ‘strange’ exam question, said that she wants her students to take full advantages of their creativeness and skill of working in teams.

The students of the Printing Newspaper Class K26, of the HCM City Academy for Journalist and Propaganda, were also happy with their latest examination, which took place at the broadcasting studio of the academy.

Students could choose to either work individually to restructure an in-depth piece of news into a brief article, or as a team to prepare a full radio broadcasting program.

Vu Thuy Binh, a lecturer in the Radio Broadcasting and Television Faculty, said that students have to do weekly exercises that are submitted to lecturers under the form of a real journalist product, many of which have been broadcast over the internal broadcasting program or STV television channel. Therefore, Binh said, students have been working with enthusiasm, so that they can receive high marks, as well as royalties.

Theoretical questions comprise only 30% of total marks for exam questions, Binh said, adding that even theoretical questions have close links with practice.

“No student gave up exams, the problem is just the level of fulfilling the exams,” Binh said.

Thanh Huong, a student of Printing Newspaper Class K26A2, related that her team had to work on the topic of narrowing the gap between parents and children. Huong was happy with the question, believing that the open exam questioning could help stimulate the creativeness of students.

The students of the Business Law class, under the Hanoi Law University have also experienced an interesting examination. The exam question for the subject of ‘labor contract consultancy’ gave them a hypothetical situation regarding a company and its’ employees, and asked that students provide a consultation to the company that covers several aspects concerning the relations and contracts between an employer and employee.

Thanh Ha, the 4^th year student of the Hanoi Law University, said that she and her friends had to refer to many laws and documents to answer the questions. “We discussed it after the examination and found out that we gave different consultations,” Ha said.

Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, Deputy Headmaster of the Law University, said that ‘open’ exam questions are always encouraged in his university, while the answers are also very ‘open.’ Students can freely express their viewpoints, provided that they can convince the lecturers.

The students of the Banking Institute have been asked to analyze the financial report of a business for their exam on business finance analysis.

Huong Trang, a fourth year student, said that in order to do the exercise, she had to make use of all the knowledge she has learned so far, and the things she has learnt from practice.

Le Thi Xuan, Head of the Finance and Banking Faculty under the Banking Institute, related that lecturers in the faculty had to seek the actual reports of some enterprises to build up the data for the exam question.

“During the studying period, we also asked students to seek financial reports of companies. This is really not a difficult task as a lot of companies listing their shares on the bourse, have to expose their financial information,” Xuan said.

Lan Huong