At my university in the U.K. evaluation was almost entirely done with exams at the end of the year. For undergrad, the exams had questions from all the courses so one could choose whichever questions one wanted to answer (this meant each course only turned up in the exams for one year. Also I did a subject which didn’t require anything like labs).
It meant homework was an opportunity for difficult questions to be used for teaching rather than a test for knowledge—the only thing preventing one from skipping homework was the shame one would experience turning up to go through the solutions and discussion without having made attempts. One could also choose how collaborative to be with the problems and discuss them with peers. The downside was that there was a lot of pressure on exams and if you were ill on exam week you’d be SOL (also no resits because why not). And some people just don’t perform to their true ability under exam conditions (though to be fair the university selected for it with entrance exams.)
It meant homework was an opportunity for difficult questions to be used for teaching rather than a test for knowledge—the only thing preventing one from skipping homework was the shame one would experience turning up to go through the solutions and discussion without having made attempts. One could also choose how collaborative to be with the problems and discuss them with peers. The downside was that there was a lot of pressure on exams and if you were ill on exam week you’d be SOL (also no resits because why not). And some people just don’t perform to their true ability under exam conditions (though to be fair the university selected for it with entrance exams.)