[wilsonthewhale]

A great example of this is how Dijkstra used to conduct final examinations where students basically showed up and had a real-time, in-person discussion with him. It must have taken forever to get through everyone, and probably isn't feasible anymore with modern class sizes.

I think a good approximation is project work, and then requiring presentation of said work. Normal exams don't really cut it.

[swiley]

The university I went to allowed students to test out of the first three semesters of intro to programming classes (IE here's the compiler, this is what OOP is etc.) but you had to have an interview like this first.

I felt extra qualified when I did it after having read through the SICP, it was kind of cool. I wish I had talked to my professors more but I felt like everything was so expensive I shouldn't mess with it.