Comment by jll29

I have a colleague who does that.

My students then often ask me to do the same, to permit them to bring one page of notes as he does.

Then I would say: just assume you're writing the exam with him and work on your one-pager of notes, optimize your notes by copying and re-writing them a few times. Now, the only difference between my exam and his exam is that the night before, you memorize your one-pager (if you re-wrote it a few times you should be able to recreate it purely from memory from that practice alone).

I believe having had all material in your memory at the same time, at least once for a short while, gives students higher self-confidence; they may forget stuff again, but they hopefully remember the feeling of mastering it.