alt Hacker News> I don't envy educators right now.
I think we have a solution for the evaluation part: the overwhelming majority of a student's grade is computed from in-person assessments only. Some instructors allow repeats on exams as well.
The teaching part is as hard, but it has always been hard. The students you get one year are completely different the next year, for various reasons. As long as you have competent administrators, all is good--this is what we sign up for.
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The challenge there is scale. Most educational establishments aren't staffed for in-person assessments. Rearranging around that is a very expensive change to make.
(Apparently German and Austrian universities already have a strong culture of oral assessment, so they're ahead of the pack.)
The solution is closed notes assessment, without any electronics used.
If tests evaluate understanding is up for debate. But that is what we switched to in the sciences.
Universities are going to have a reckoning moment, as most degrees 1) are not economically viable and 2) don't make sense to be taught in the current mode of instruction.