Next thursday is exam-day for my students. I had them all write an essay on a network topic of their choice. I presented them to my dad (who is a layman when it comes to IT) and my brother (who has his fair share of experience). Quite a few essays have speling mistakes, others use strange fonts or wrote twice as much as I asked. I'm also quite amazed by the extra features some protocols would have gotten if they were designed by my students :) Overall, I'm pleased with the essays.. We'll see about the results on thursday :)
Those students that add bells and whistles or waffle or struggle to meet limits in size and time are going to really struggle later in real work, or be a problem for their bosses or cowrkers a they over-engineer, blind-with-science and bullshit their way through their career.
Not that I think your students are a trying anything on - just that correctintg these problems early on will have a big benefit.
Nothing teaches you the importance of deadlines and brevity like the threat of failed coursework or getting a poor grade on something you have worked really hard on.
