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Exams are the mark of a lazy instructor who doesn’t want to design appropriately challenging assignments, as the author says: “I hadn’t fully prepped the class”.
Putting a multiple choice test online and expecting students to not take advantage of this examination method is very naive.
Exams are the mark of a lazy instructor who doesn’t want to design appropriately challenging assignments, as the author says: “I hadn’t fully prepped the class”.
What appropriately challenging cheat-proof calculus assignment could you give to a classroom of 100 undergrads? As soon as those questions leave the classroom, they will be passed around in group chats. That’s why exams remain relevant. If a student averages 95% on their assignments, but shows up to the exam and can’t solve ∫sin x dx like they had supposedly done a hundred times on their own, then they’re probably ch…
The math exam which I wrote was also very demanding and had a very tight time limit. There wasn’t any time to compare results with a group chat or use tools like wolfram alpha. Either you knew how to solve the exercises or you didn’t and failed.
This is part of why academic credentials have both lost their intrinsic value and become mandatory for all candidates. While it may seem contradictory at first, the appearance of low ability amongst credentialed candidates also lowers the perceived value of the non-credentialed; fore if the credentialed are so lacking in ability, then those unable to achieve even such a low bar must be worse, yes? Of course, this isn…
I don’t know, a multiple choice quiz shouldn’t be used for grading students at all? My university asks the students to make projects in groups which are different from one another. One team gets to write a tictactoe game in c with ncurses library, one team gets to write connect four with another library and has to implement a given Interface, etc pp. Honestly, these kind of multiple choice tests just suck, and OP sho…
I hate to be a cynic here but I feel like education should be engineered in a manner that either : (A) assumes cheating will take place whenever possible and create curriculum , assignments, quizzes and exams with this in mind. (B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer of interest.
It’s easy to do—don’t issue any credentials. It’s just that the very lucrative businesses don’t want to do that because they know exactly what they are selling and it ain’t education.
I hate to be a cynic here but I feel like education should be engineered in a manner that either : (A) assumes cheating will take place whenever possible and create curriculum , assignments, quizzes and exams with this in mind. (B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer of interest.
Since we were little, we were requested by our parents to get a good grade in examinations in order to, eventually, get into a good college.
We were told that graduating from a good college brings ourselves/the family a better quality of life, but the "benefits" part stops here. People don't care about those knowledges that are not likely to make us money one day. Most of us just study for a better paying jobs.
The society doesn't care about the process, but the outcome, evaluated by the momey in our bank account.
Sir Ken Robinson has a lot to say about the education paradigm and why it should be changed, and in what ways. He appeared on TED[1][2], too, since then, and probably elsewhere as well.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
This is part of why academic credentials have both lost their intrinsic value and become mandatory for all candidates. While it may seem contradictory at first, the appearance of low ability amongst credentialed candidates also lowers the perceived value of the non-credentialed; fore if the credentialed are so lacking in ability, then those unable to achieve even such a low bar must be worse, yes? Of course, this isn…
I don’t know, a multiple choice quiz shouldn’t be used for grading students at all? My university asks the students to make projects in groups which are different from one another. One team gets to write a tictactoe game in c with ncurses library, one team gets to write connect four with another library and has to implement a given Interface, etc pp. Honestly, these kind of multiple choice tests just suck, and OP sho…
Multiple choice quizzes are also useful to the student because they provide a snapshot of fact memorization and maybe some application but there is no point in counting the grades, IMO.
If we must evaluate students, then we should be treating evaluation as important as imparting knowledge and experience and spend the time on it that it deserves. Students deserve and need timely and thoughtful individual feedback in order to improve anyway. That means thoughtful projects and a lot of time spent grading. How you incentivize this amongst educators who often don’t even want to be teaching is beyond my pay grade.
(Additionally, a grade should reflect level of mastery at the end of the course regardless of progression but that’s not how grades are generally calculated.)
Quite a read, indeed. As a student witnessing the amount of cheating going on, I was always surprised about the noise raised by teachers on it: I always felt that my score was my own, and didn't care about comparing against others. Perhaps that's why I didn't care? Another thing is that college is voluntary, and everyone takes the courses for some perceived gain. If it's just a diploma with high GPA, I let them be. T…
You voluntarily agree to abide by the academic integrity rules. If you don't want to do that, you can voluntarily go to a different institution with different rules and standards. The goal of the place is learning not pointscoring and cheating undermines that.