I expect students to frequently participate in and contribute to class discussions. Students should be able to do independent study and present the results of independent study in a written paper with proper referencing. I like to give somewhat unstructured homework assignments that give the student the opportunity to perform a method or technique and then evaluate the results. I also try to give each student the maximum opportunity to focus his or her study and work into areas of particular interest. I tend to down play the significance of examinations as a way to evaluate a student's knowledge of the subject area, but I do use examinations as a means of ensuring a comprehensive understing of the material sutdied in a course.
Examinations are generally essay in nature.
Other methods of assessing a student's ability include performance on individual exercises, term projects, and class participation. I usually lecture from PowerPoint slides which are made available to students via the course's Web page. But in addition, I expect graduate students to have an in-depth understanding of computer science and software engineering principles as well as familiarity with literature published in technical books, conference proceedings, and journals. Graduate students must possess basic library and research skills. Graduate students must be capabable of independent study and must be able to write technical reports with proper use of reference material and correct citations.