51–60 of 124 posts
Why not skew the grading more heavily towards in-class midterms and finals?
Or you could generate indivualized hws for each student, but that may not be feasible in a 500 student intro to cs class.
Here's the easiest solution: stop grading homework Why judge student performance on something that they are using _to learn_? It doesn't make any sense. Every student is basically competing with one another to get the highest GPA possible - if you're going to give them cookie cutter homework with solutions can be easily searched for on the internet _and_ can only bring their GPA down, then they're going to cheat. Pla…
Because it's not that simple. These are INTRO classes.
For many students, an intro CS class may be the first class they have encountered in their lives in which they finally have to work.
So, part of the job of a teacher is to teach the class material but also to teach good studying habits. Without grading homework, the first real feedback that a student is in trouble will come on a midterm when they fail--the feedback is WAY too late at that point.
That having been said--your professor isn't as stupid as you think he is. Plagiarism that fools the professor is as much work as just doing the assignment.
And professors have lots of ways of dealing with plagiarists far short of disciplinary proceedings. For example, partial credit on exams is quite subjective, and plagiarists tend to lose the "coin flip" if the professor is on the fence.
The problem I have is simply that there are quite a few professors who simply don't care. They make it far too easy to cheat--reusing a previous year's project or exam, for example, is a no-no.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can still grade the homework (to give both lecturers and students feedback), but just have it not count towards the kids letter grade in the course. If no one is doing it, then you could make the grade for homework pass / fail: did you hand something gradeable in or not?
or have it count to a small part of the grade. Basically, perhaps construct a class like this 1) HW 20% of the grade 2) Quiz (say 1 Q a week related to homework that was returned a week ago, give students a chance to figure out what they did wrong) - say 20% of grade 3) midterm and final, a 30/30 or 20/40 split. one can adjust the percentages to achieve one's desired pedagogical goals. personally, I don't find copyin…
Here's an idea: why not make the assignments personal enough that you cannot cheat on them? "But wait, that would require huge amounts of time investment from the professors/TAs" Yes, it's almost as if paying $65k a year for someone to teach you something should result in that person teaching you that thing instead of just checking in to see if you've learned it on your own.
Here's an idea: you try to do that teaching three or four sections and report back how that goes. I am not sure if you have ever taught post secondary classes before, but what you're describing is untenable for someone who wants to not work 12 hour days. It's a nice idea, and I know that I would have loved to do that when I was teaching, but the fact of the matter is it isn't feasible unless you have a squadron of TA…
That universities pay the TA's beans isn't the customer's problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Standardized homeworks as a simple check on learning with an individual or group project at the end has been my favorite way of learning.
Sure! But the method of learning doesn't have to be the method of assessment . In fact, as pointed out upthread, it shouldn't be. When students are doing homework you want them to form collaborative study groups or freely consult any other source, if it helps them learn. Fear of plagiarism is antithetical to that.
Here's the easiest solution: stop grading homework Why judge student performance on something that they are using _to learn_? It doesn't make any sense. Every student is basically competing with one another to get the highest GPA possible - if you're going to give them cookie cutter homework with solutions can be easily searched for on the internet _and_ can only bring their GPA down, then they're going to cheat. Pla…
But then where does your grade come from? More testing doesn’t seem like a good solution.
Suppose that technique X can actually deter students from cheating 100% of the time.
So we apply technique X to intro class Z that has 300 students.
Now we have an intro class of 300 non-cheating students who sit quietly and listen to an instructor for an hour a week.
Then those non-cheating students sign in for a more reasonably sized class section of 40 to sit quietly and listen to a graduate student for an hour.
Finally, these non-cheating students take tests and do assignments written in such a way that the amount of grading time does not put the graduate students over the weekly allotted work time for their TA-ship in their particular program.
Ballpark-- by what percentage would one say the quality of the learning environment has improved by employing technique X?
Almost every aspect of our discipline encourages open source code sharing and code reuse. This is a discipline wide mind set. In fact, "build it yourself from scratch" is an anti-pattern in my opinion. I'm not condoning cheating, but why would one not expect this to be be the default behavior? As others have suggested, there are much easier "solutions" related to logging keystrokes and commits should you really want…
In the context of getting things done, that is sometimes true.
However, as an employer, I want to know that you:
1) have enough knowledge to build it from scratch if you have to, starting with analyzing the problem and ending with a coded, tested, debugged, and working solution, preferably at least somewhat optimized.
2) have enough knowledge to be able to read the code that you might want to use in [not building it from scratch] and assess it's value, considering A) whether it will meet the actual need, B) whether it will do so at a lower cost than writing it in-house from scratch, C) whether it will meet or exceed performance parameters, D) not introduce more problems than an in-house solution.
3) make a well-informed and reasoned decision between #1 and #2, and not merely be a copy-paste monkey.
Doing copy-paste as a regular practice in school eliminates all three of these capabilities.
In short, school is different from work, and you need to adhere to different practices.
edit: format
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Optional homework almost definitely won't get done. Making it count ensures that students would actually do it, which is useful to instructors (what do they need to focus on in class? Is the class understanding the lectures?).
You can still grade the homework (to give both lecturers and students feedback), but just have it not count towards the kids letter grade in the course. If no one is doing it, then you could make the grade for homework pass / fail: did you hand something gradeable in or not?
Maybe that's the trick - make the requirements for passing good enough that the minimum still requires learning and engagement, and then just grade on a straight pass/fail.