Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
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Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#2You may cheat all you want on your homework, but if calculus tests are like they were when I was in college, taking your exam with no notes or calculator, if you've only cut and pasted from Wolfram Alpha all semester is going to lead you to getting an F in the course.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#3You may cheat all you want on your homework, but if calculus tests are like they were when I was in college, taking your exam with no notes or calculator, if you've only cut and pasted from Wolfram Alpha all semester is going to lead you to getting an F in the course.
But it might seem like good time management to have Wolfram Alpha do your homework sometimes. That means it's going to take longer for a teacher to notice that you're not getting a concept well, and that means a lot more painful surprise-F's on tests.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#4You may cheat all you want on your homework, but if calculus tests are like they were when I was in college, taking your exam with no notes or calculator, if you've only cut and pasted from Wolfram Alpha all semester is going to lead you to getting an F in the course.
Agreed. This headline makes it sound like they're cheating in exams, but this is take-home assignments we're talking about. If wolfram alpha wasn't available, they'd be asking friends or posting in maths forums. Wolfram alpha is simply more efficient at this job but all take-home assignments have this problem inherently.
Students just need to be aware that they should learn from solutions provided by wolfram alpha (there's nothing wrong with that), otherwise they're going to flunk the closed-book exams anyway.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#5Its not just high school students. I had some classmates in grad school using it to breeze through feedback theory homework. The tool is as powerful as students are lazy.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#6It is not cheating. It is leveling the playing field.
Some students will inevitably have access to tutors or parents who can give them the full answer. With wolfram|Alpha all students have access to this.
What this really show is that homework isn't the best tool for gauging student prowess.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#7This isn't new... I had a TI-89 in college that could solve for calculus equations. As someone else pointed out... we couldn't use it on tests though.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#8You may cheat all you want on your homework, but if calculus tests are like they were when I was in college, taking your exam with no notes or calculator, if you've only cut and pasted from Wolfram Alpha all semester is going to lead you to getting an F in the course.
Too right; it may help being able to just provide the answers, but homework made up a small percentage compared to the actual exams, which of course were done without any notes and were simple enough not to need a calculator.
It may be difficult trying to teach these kids how to perform the math itself when they can show the homework, but ultimately they are failing themselves when it comes down to needing a fundamental understanding on the process itself.
This reminds me more of teachers scoffing at calculators being a crutch. It comes down to the students' willingness to learn, not how to thwart cheating on homework.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#9Or they could cheat by doing their homework, then checking the results on Wolfram Alpha to make sure they always get 100%.
Re: Wolfram Alpha Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat
#10You may cheat all you want on your homework, but if calculus tests are like they were when I was in college, taking your exam with no notes or calculator, if you've only cut and pasted from Wolfram Alpha all semester is going to lead you to getting an F in the course.
Too right; it may help being able to just provide the answers, but homework made up a small percentage compared to the actual exams, which of course were done without any notes and were simple enough not to need a calculator. It may be difficult trying to teach these kids how to perform the math itself when they can show the homework, but ultimately they are failing themselves when it comes down to needing a fundamen…
My impression is that the article is about highschool students, where homework tends to be on the order of 75% of your grade simply because you get so much of it.
If someone were really serious about abusing the service they could pull out a C in the class even with hard failures of the tests.