By grading the take-home essays merely for completion, your policy de facto gives up on take home essays. (That’s not a criticism—that’s what I’ve done.) Essentially, your policy is to grade students by their performance on the exams, and tell them “Hey, if you want to improve your chances of doing well on the exam, try writing some similar essays at home. I won’t be grading those, and you can AI them if you like (you just need to hand in SOMETHING to get credit), but it really would be better for you if you actually wrote them on your own.” Personally, I think it would make more sense just to move the 20% credit you’re giving for completing the take home essays over to the exam. I can’t really see the point of giving 20% of the course credit for something so easily AI-able. The incentive to actually write the take-home essays (i.e., to do well on the exams) remains in place regardless of whether you give credit for completing them.
By grading the take-home essays merely for completion, your policy de facto gives up on take home essays. (That’s not a criticism—that’s what I’ve done.) Essentially, your policy is to grade students by their performance on the exams, and tell them “Hey, if you want to improve your chances of doing well on the exam, try writing some similar essays at home. I won’t be grading those, and you can AI them if you like (you just need to hand in SOMETHING to get credit), but it really would be better for you if you actually wrote them on your own.” Personally, I think it would make more sense just to move the 20% credit you’re giving for completing the take home essays over to the exam. I can’t really see the point of giving 20% of the course credit for something so easily AI-able. The incentive to actually write the take-home essays (i.e., to do well on the exams) remains in place regardless of whether you give credit for completing them.