[smichel17]

Someone I know went to a college where the final exam was 100% of the grade, in most courses. You could retake it as many times as you want, but only if you scored below 70% (presumably to limit the amount of retakes). The result was that if people weren't feeling confident on the test day, they would recycle their test (not hand it in), thereby receiving a zero and guaranteeing the ability to retake.

Designing systems of incentives is hard.

That said, several of the mentioned problems seem like they have solutioms.

- Excessive detail: keep both or several sets of instructions. The detailed version is authoritative in the case of a dispute by the student, but as long as they don't dispute, it's fine if they follow the spirit of the instructions.

- Deadlines: Give X "extension tokens" per semester, which allow students to submit one day late, no questions asked. Max 2 tokens per assignment (48h extension). My undergrad CS department did this and it was great.

I would guess the latter would work well for regrades as well. A generous but bounded number of regrade tokens. You could even do something like make unused tokens worth 1 bonus % on the final exam, if you want to further disincentive abuse.

[Aeolun]

> The detailed version is authoritative in the case of a dispute

I think this means everyone will always refer the detailed version. Especially if this is stated up front. Nobody wants to be fucked if the _do_ legitimately need to dispute.