> Tests need to be based on long form questions that test comprehensive knowledge. Open book, Open notes, and hell even open-collaboration up to some limit.
Coursework is already along these lines, no?
> The solution to testing students in a way that they can't cheat is to simply design tests that require students to apply their knowledge as if in the real world.
How would this apply to a course in real analysis, say?
University education generally isn't intended to be vocational.
It is but exams are not and if the intent of exams is to test knowledge, they should be in a format that is applicable to the real world and one that can't easily be cheated. Also for what it is worth, for essentially all of the courses I took in university, unless they were explicitly projects based classes, exams were the overwhelming majority of the grades in the course (often ~75-90%).
What this meant in practice was that exams that were closed-book, closed-notes often had averages in the 30s or 40s where everyone got curved upwards at the end of the day while open-book exams had averages in the 60s-80s and students who could apply their knowledge passed the exam while students who couldn't didn't. I can't recall a single course with the latter style of exams where I passed without knowing the material or failed while knowing it. For the prior however I personally experienced both and witnessed numerous other students go through this at the same.
> How would this apply to a course in real analysis, say?
Sorry if I wasn't clear but when I said "as if in the real world" I was referring specifically to students having access to the same resources they would have in the real world (aka reasonably flexible time constraints and with access to texts, resources, and tools) not necessarily that the questions needed to be structured as "in your field you'd use this like this" kind of questions.
Coursework is already along these lines, no?
> The solution to testing students in a way that they can't cheat is to simply design tests that require students to apply their knowledge as if in the real world.
How would this apply to a course in real analysis, say?
University education generally isn't intended to be vocational.