Take-home exams in introductory inorganic chemistry

Take-home exams in introductory inorganic chemistry were trialed at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway as a precautionary measure during the COVID pandemic – as it turns out, with great success. Understandably, this type of exam is not common due to concerns about cheating by students. Our course emphasized mechanistic arguments, which, we surmised, would discourage large-scale cheating. Post-pandemic, another concern arose – the potential for undue reliance on large language models (AI) in take-home exams. Once again, a mechanistic approach is coming to our rescue, as current language models cannot effectively navigate mechanistic reasoning. Other forms of reasoning, related to electronic structure and thermodynamics, are also beyond the reach of current AIs. By staying one step ahead of AIs, we find that take-home exams can provide an exciting and rigorous format for final exams in an introductory inorganic chemistry course.