This paper presents a methodology to evaluate students’ performance by combining take-home exams with in-person exams. Summative assessments, such as course exams, are an essential part of higher education since it tests whether students are meeting the learning outcomes. These assessments are typically in-person, strictly timed exams. An alternative, take-home exams, have been growing in popularity with the introduction of online degrees, and certainly during the recent pandemic. Take-home exams give students more flexibility and a less stressful exam experience, however, these exams are problematic since they offer students an easier opportunity to collaborate with other students. In order to minimize the temptation to collaborate with others, the instructor in this study combined the take-home exam with an in-person exam. Students were aware that they were not allowed to collaborate during the take-home exam, and that there would be an in-class assessment where they must demonstrate that they understood the material on the take-home exam by answering similar questions.

Subjects of this study were sophomore engineering students who took a programming course, and junior engineering students who took traditional lecture courses. In this study, students must submit their take-home exam before working on their in-person exam. The take-home exam is open-book while the in-person exam is closed-book exam where they demonstrate their work directly to the instructor. Questions in the in-person exams are similar to questions in their take-home exam. Results of this study show that this method increases students’ performance in class. They tend to do well on both exams and their scores on both exams are very close. This methodology reduces the number of exam collaborations in the take-home exams, and this method can be applied to both programming classes and traditional lecture classes.