The quote you gave is not the conclusion of the article. It's a self-evident claim that just as well could have been the first sentence of the article ("take-home exams are dead"), followed by an opinion ("reverting ... feels like a regression") which motivated the experiment.
Some universities and professors have tried to move to a take-home exam format, which allows for more comprehensive evaluation with easier logistics than a too-brief in-class exam or an hours-long outside-of-class sitting where unreasonable expectations for mental and sometimes physical stamina are factors. That "take-home exams are dead" is self-evident, not a result of the experiment in the article. There used to be only a limited number of ways to cheat at a take-home exam, and most of them involved finding a second person who also lacked a moral conscience. Now, it's trivial to cheat at a take-home exam all by yourself.
You also mentioned the hundreds of years of experience universities have at traditional written exams. But the type and manner of knowledge and skills that must be tested for vary dramatically by discipline, and the discipline in question (computer science / software engineering) is still new enough that we can't really say we've matured the art of examining for it.
Lastly, I'll just say that student preference is hardly the way to measure the quality of an exam, or much of anything about education.
> The quote you gave is not the conclusion of the article.
Did I say "conclusion" ? Sorry, I should have said the section just before the acknowledgements, where the conclusion would normally be, entitled "The bigger point"
Some universities and professors have tried to move to a take-home exam format, which allows for more comprehensive evaluation with easier logistics than a too-brief in-class exam or an hours-long outside-of-class sitting where unreasonable expectations for mental and sometimes physical stamina are factors. That "take-home exams are dead" is self-evident, not a result of the experiment in the article. There used to be only a limited number of ways to cheat at a take-home exam, and most of them involved finding a second person who also lacked a moral conscience. Now, it's trivial to cheat at a take-home exam all by yourself.
You also mentioned the hundreds of years of experience universities have at traditional written exams. But the type and manner of knowledge and skills that must be tested for vary dramatically by discipline, and the discipline in question (computer science / software engineering) is still new enough that we can't really say we've matured the art of examining for it.
Lastly, I'll just say that student preference is hardly the way to measure the quality of an exam, or much of anything about education.