I strongly am in the favor of what the International Biology Olympiad has put forwarded regarding the quantity and quality of competition test questions: the majority of questions should test students’ understanding, science process skills and application of their biological knowledge. The questions testing only knowledge should not exceed 25% of the total points…
This tip obviously limits the quantity of so-called knowledge-based questions. It’s so silly to expect our gifted students memorize e.g. the table of amino acid codons, instead of solving a problem in the field of Biology. This limitation makes biology education more relevant and gives it a new role and aspect, what we all like.