Soooo..I teach IT for a living and am thankfully thankfully free of being on the research side of things. I am incredibly lucky to be able to generally do things how I like.

I let them know mostly early on: I do grades because I have to, not because I enjoy them. I've settled on the following: I try to make the biggest assignment an ongoing project-thing that they "turn in" more than once, and try to coach them into primarily learning and doing -- and turning in something that I can reasonably slap a good grade on.

I do one or two small quiz type deals on top of that. Very hard multiple choice, but take-home, and you're on your honor to not to consult live humans. Also, I do the nice type of "curve," so if your fellow students' grades are average low, that helps you. Honestly, this is much more to maintain classic ideas about grading, though I suppose it helps keep the younger ones on their toes. Also, I find the psychological effect of "QUIZ" to be sufficient to get people to prepare, even when they don't check the syllabus and see that these aren't all that much of their final grade.

This seems to be a pretty good way to do IT type classes.