Unstable Problems and the Future of Assessment

Reposted from my LinkedIn articles, first published April 20, 2026

In a world where everything is accessible, the real challenge is not solving problems quickly, but working with problems that refuse to settle.

I came across a post recently describing a speculative form of university exam. The premise was that students would be given full access to everything: the internet, their notes, their devices, each other, and even external experts. The exam would run for several hours and revolve around a single question. The suggestion was that this reflects the conditions we now work in, where access to information is no longer the constraint and the real differentiator lies in how we think, select, and act.

My initial reaction was that it felt familiar. Not because it is already standard practice, but because it resembles a number of existing pedagogical models. There are echoes of problem-based learning, where students are presented with a scenario and asked to work through it collaboratively. There are also parallels with design thinking, where a problem is explored, reframed, and worked on intensively over a short period of time, often with the aim of arriving at a provisional solution. The exam, in that sense, reads less as a radical departure and more as a compressed, high-intensity version of approaches that already exist.

What interested me more was not the openness of the conditions, but the nature of the problem being set. A common way of thinking about problems is as a gap between two states. There is a current situation and a desired one, and the task is to find a way across. It is a simple model, but a useful one, particularly in domains where the terms of the problem can be specified with some clarity. Even when the task is complex, the structure remains intact. The difficulty lies in navigating the space between A and B, not in questioning whether A and B are the right points to begin with.

In those contexts, opening up access to tools does not fundamentally alter the nature of the task. It changes the conditions under which it is performed, but the problem itself remains recognisable. Students still need to decide what matters, select appropriate methods, and justify their choices. The presence of external resources does not remove the need for judgement; if anything, it intensifies it.

The picture becomes less straightforward when we move into areas where the problem does not present itself in that form. If we take something like painting a watercolour, it becomes difficult to locate a clear starting point and an equally clear destination. The painter does not begin with a fully specified outcome. The work develops through a sequence of decisions, responses, and adjustments. The sense of what the work is trying to become is not fixed in advance but emerges through the act of making.

In this situation, the problem is not simply a gap waiting to be bridged. It is something that shifts as it is engaged with. A painter might begin with a loose intention, only to find that the work moves in a different direction. What seemed important at the outset may fall away, and something else may take its place. The criteria for resolution are not stable, and the question of whether the work is finished is often inseparable from the process of making it.

This kind of instability is not confined to artistic practice. It appears across much of the humanities and in forms of inquiry where meaning, interpretation, and context are central. In these domains, the difficulty is often not in solving a problem that has been clearly defined, but in working out what the problem is and how it might be approached. Different framings produce different problems, and those problems do not necessarily converge on a single answer.

Seen from this perspective, the more interesting question about an open, tool-rich exam is not whether students have access to information, but what happens to the problem under those conditions. If the problem can be stabilised quickly, then the abundance of tools can narrow the task. It becomes possible to assemble a response that is technically competent without engaging deeply with the underlying issues. The problem resolves too easily, and the work risks becoming procedural.

If, on the other hand, the problem resists that kind of stabilisation, then the presence of tools has a different effect. External input does not settle the matter but introduces further perspectives, complications, and points of tension. The student is required to navigate that complexity, to make decisions about how to frame the problem, and to account for those decisions in a way that is coherent and defensible.

This is where the idea of problem instability becomes useful. Rather than treating instability as a weakness in the design of a task, it can be understood as a condition to be worked with. A problem that remains open under inquiry places a different kind of demand on the student. It requires them to define and redefine the situation, to recognise that alternative framings are possible, and to justify the path they choose to take.

In this sense, the work is not simply about arriving at a solution, but about engaging with a problem that does not fully resolve. The emphasis shifts towards judgement, positioning, and the ability to sustain a line of inquiry without collapsing it too quickly. The outcome is not a single correct answer, but a considered response to a situation that remains, in some sense, unsettled.

The speculative exam I started with is a useful provocation because it foregrounds the conditions under which students are now expected to work. It acknowledges that information is widely available and that the ability to use it well matters more than the ability to recall it. At the same time, it opens up a deeper question about the kinds of problems we set and what we expect students to do with them.

In some fields, the challenge lies in solving a problem as effectively as possible within a given set of constraints. In others, the challenge lies in working with a problem that cannot be fully stabilised, where the act of inquiry changes the nature of the problem itself. Those are different modes of thinking, and they call for different approaches to assessment.

The more difficult task, particularly in the humanities, is not designing around the presence of tools, but ensuring that the problem remains meaningful in their presence. That often means allowing the problem to stay in play, rather than closing it down too quickly.

Thank you to Zaved AnsariZaved Ansari for the initial post.