In my experience, a lot of students strongly prefer memorizing to thinking, and will penalize you on student evaluations if you force them to.
My evaluations went up a full point when I switched from writing my own open note/open book exam to using the department's standard "memorize all the things and do mechanical transformations" exam. Students complained a lot less also.
I had a professor who offered a novel scheme that left me pretty happy with take home exams. Students are usually turned off because a good take-home is really, really hard. What this professor did was give you the exam, mark incorrect problems, and then if the class average was poor, give you a second copy. You would turn the second copy in a few days later, and you would get some fraction of the credit for any improvement in your score. (Say you got a 60 the first time and an 80 the second time, you might end with a 65-70)
The result was that, after being challenged by difficult problems that require your complete focus, you are given some feedback on what you got wrong, at which point you go back to the book to work out what the real answer is. That revision step is key; the promise of some recovery points is mostly just motivation to take it seriously
I felt like those exams were huge learning experiences. The caveats are: it is more work for the professor; this was an upper division course, so students were serious and the class size was small; the best problems are hard and open ended.
My evaluations went up a full point when I switched from writing my own open note/open book exam to using the department's standard "memorize all the things and do mechanical transformations" exam. Students complained a lot less also.